Heroes Don't Exist
by Brigidforest
Summary: A multichapter story following the oneshot: It's 2072, four years after Faye woke up to find out the world of Cowboy Bebop was all a dream. Ch 12: Spike Spiegel hated Earth.
1. Heroes Don't Exist

"I'm not going there to die. I'm going there to see if I really am alive." The words hovered over them like an ominous fume. It was a painful poison that clung and ached in her throat. She could have killed him then, or at least severely injured him. She aimed her gun right at his shoulder, but her finger failed to pull the trigger. She willed it and willed it some more, but it wouldn't listen. Her will wasn't strong enough to overcome her fears, and that venomous history that had consumed him. The gunshots that had meant to be in him were instead being lunged at the guiltless ceiling. The metal shrieked above her, and after the fifth shot and when he was almost out of sight, her trembling hand surrendered.

The Swordfish II's engines roared through the halls of the Bebop until they were the distant thunder of a storm that had already rampaged through and was on its way to render someone else homeless. Faye Valentine could barely breathe between the hard sobs escaping her mouth. She still held the gun in one hand, and she cried because she knew that he wouldn't come back this time. This time she wouldn't be sitting by his side waiting for him to wake up to play a trick on him or to hear him patronize her yet again. There would be no scolding for running off like that, not from her, not from Jet. This one would be the end of him. He knew that, and he had told her that when he looked at her with those grievous eyes.

She bit her lip and willed her feet to carry her to the room. If Jet came by, she wouldn't want to face him. He would be this sour reminder of what had happened, of what they hadn't done to stop him. All she wanted now was to sleep, and then to wake up, and realize that just like Spike said, this was all a dream.

**Heroes Don't Exist**

_Day 1_

Cold. She was cold all over but she wasn't shivering. She wanted to reach for her blanket, but her hand wouldn't move. Her clothes weighed her down with a heavy dampness and an oily adhesiveness that clung to her skin. Had the Bebop sprung a leak while she had been sleeping?

"BP is ninety over sixty and temperature 96.5 degrees and increasing. She's doing perfect, doctor." A voice sifted through static in her ears. She didn't understand what any of that meant. She was too preoccupied with her senses, and the metallic taste surfacing from the back of her throat. She even tried at some point to open her mouth to ask what the hell was going on, but no sound emerged. She was muted in her confusion.

"No, don't try to speak. You're going to be fine." The soft susurrus of that voice echoing and echoing. Her limbs ached so much, and the voice, she couldn't quite decipher the gender of it yet, must have heard her groan. "You're going to be a bit sore as your muscles get used to the new change in temperature." Clearer now. Definitely a male voice. He went back to yelling more medical jargon back and forth with a woman, the first voice she had heard.

"Spike." She had no idea why his name was the first thing that her husky voice managed to utter, but it clung to her tongue and her lips so instinctively that it frightened her.

"Don't say anything," the male voice gently reminded her. When she opened her eyes, the light was intrusive at first. She felt like a newborn baby soaked in the sudden brightness of the real world. She felt the terrible urge to cry out. And so she did.

"What's wrong?" he asked. Faye felt a warm hand on her forehead, but she just continued crying and crying. When his face finally came into focus, she saw his older features, his fair skin, gray hair and gray eyes behind rimless glasses that stared at her with a peculiar concern—the type of concern one has when something expensive might break.

"Where am I?" Her voice broke after each gasp between her words. "What happened?"

"You've been reborn," he told her. His eyes glistened in the bright light. "Do you remember your name?"

"Faye." She mouthed it with a sudden jolt of fear. "Valentine." She held her breath.

"Valentine?" The man echoed as his brow crumpled and his head shook. "The tag definitely said Morgan. Faye Morgan." Hearing her real name sent her into a fit of hysterical sobbing.

"No. No. My—where am I!" she shouted now, forcing her voice to a volume that it could hardly handle so her vowels sounded like incoherent shrieks. Her muscles finally began to respond, and she moved her arms and legs sporadically without any direction or actual control of where they went or how the moved.

"Jensen, give her the sedative now." His tone morphed with the command. He sounded like he would swallow her alive. He held her down with his own weight. Faye soon felt a pinch on her back, and then her muscles went rigid again, and her face numb until she finally faded back into the dark womb.

_Day 2_

She opened her eyes slowly, cautiously waiting for the bright light to explode in her face again. Her hands explored the soft cotton around her. When she grew accustomed to the light that peeked through, she immediately gathered that she was in hospital from the white and gray mechanical surroundings. Faye glanced toward white door, and then down to her legs. Her feet moved right when she told them to and the rest of her nerves were just as obedient, but could she make it to the door? Before she finally gathered to courage to run, and before she even had the chance of wondering what had actually happened to her, the door slid open.

The same old man from before entered wearing a white robe with a tag that clung to his breast pocket with his picture on it and writing that she couldn't quite focus her eyes on yet. He had a chart in hand, and he smiled bleakly when he saw her.

"I see you're awake. Welcome back," he said, and grabbed the black-wheeled stool that had been tucked under the hospital dining table. "I'm Doctor Iver, and I am so sorry about what happened. I should have never woken you up so abruptly. I didn't think you would, so I didn't take any measures to make sure otherwise. That is my mistake. How do you feel now?"

Faye eyeballed him with a newfound anger in her. "Who the fuck are you?" The doctor stared at her a little displeased, but not surprised.

"I know it must be all so confusing for you, Faye, but there's something I need to tell you." He paused and her heartbeat leapt to her throat. "Do you remember anything?" Faye didn't respond, but simply stared at him. Her mind was blank. She was just angry. She couldn't think of anything else. "What's the last thing you remember, Faye?"

She began to dig frantically, until the sour memory hit her. Spike, the Bebop, the face off, his eyes, his leaving, and then—then she went to sleep. Had the Bebop had some kind of accident while she was attempting to forget it all? But they were stationary. Had somebody tried to blow them to bits?

"Yeah, I went to sleep, and then, did something happen to the Bebop at bay?" Faye questioned him.

"The Bebop?" Iver echoed her again, and then took a deep breath as if bracing himself for the worst news yet. He rubbed his ears nervously, and then focused back on Faye. "Do you know what year it is, Faye?"

"2071," she responded mechanically. The doctor's eyes widened, and his mouth parted slightly.

"No, Faye." His gray stare focused gravely on her. "You were cryogenically frozen for fifty-two years. The year is 2068," he added in a low tone. Her heart beat stuck at throat. It crackled and expanded there, stuck on that last beat. She spat it out with a hard sob.

"No. No! I was—I am—I woke up already. The year is 2071! I am Faye Valentine." Faye shouted incredulously as the tears welled in her eyes. She had lost it. She had gone to sleep and lost him. "Where the hell is Jet? What have you done?"

"No, Faye. Faye! Listen to me, you have been asleep for over fifty years." The doctor reiterated.

Her body began to shake uncontrollably. "No. Spike and Jet, and no!" She yelled with her hands clamped over her ears. The doctor grabbed her arms still trying to talk to her but she began to kick him until she finally pried him off.

"Get the fuck away from me! Go the fuck away!" She gave herself short slaps with both hands repeatedly. "No, the year is 2071. 2071. 2071. My name is Faye Valentine." Among her mutters and shouts, she heard the doctor calling for the nurse.

"My name is Faye Valentine."

_Week 2_

She came into her office and set her mail down on her desk on top of a stack of papers on the corner. The pile rejected the new addition of weight and collapsed on the ground. She groaned, rolled her head from side to side, and finally faced the reality of another Monday morning. The coffee had failed to sober her up and to help her recover from the abrupt awakening of her alarm clock. Instead, all she could think of was what a jumbled mess this past weekend had been. After picking up most of her papers, she sat down and glared at the pile of charts on her desk all with her name at the top: Doctor Joan Bower. Massaging her temples, she breathed in deep ready to enter back into her work zone. She needed to let go of this weekend. She knew well that she shouldn't have slept with the sergeant last night. Her arms were sore from holding his chest back—a fruitless attempt to control his heavy thrusting into her—and the pain served as a terrible reminder of her mistake.

Joan couldn't take that back, so she had to forget last night, and hopefully he would too. She glanced down at her first chart and read the name typed on the tag of the chart folder. Faye Morgan. She remembered reading about her on Friday. The poor girl had gone into a delusional psychosis from the trauma of the cryogenic awakening. Morgan claimed that the year was 2071 and that she had been living as a bounty hunter for the last year or so aboard a ship called The Bebop. She felt sorry for her. Joan had no idea how she would tell Faye that she was now property of the military, but she couldn't worry about that yet. All she could do was to help Faye regain control of her mind, and even though that wouldn't be enough, it was all she could offer.

Joan pulled out her compact mirror and a hair tie from her black pocketbook. She hadn't put her straight auburn hair in a bun this morning, and she hated walking into work looking so casual like that. After putting on her make-up, those light browns to accentuate or rather draw away from the blue of her eyes, she realized she was running a bit behind and she definitely needed her coffee above everything. As she pulled her hair up and twisted it in the usual bun, she noticed a small chicken-feet shaped wrinkle under both her eyes. Joan cursed in her mind. The last thing she needed to worry about, at the already horrible age of thirty-nine and past one divorce, was another stupid wrinkle, and this time under her eyes. She clamped the compact shut, and took another deep breath.

She glanced at the metallic clock on the wall next to her large mahogany five-shelved book case filled with volumes of psychology and neurology journals, more contemporary works of psychologists and psychiatrists of the time. The clock read 10:25, almost time for her first appointment. Joan continued reading Faye's file, and was amazed at how little they knew about her. She was an unusual _sleeper_, as they had come to call them, so old that her information had been wiped from the system after the Gate Incident. Joan had no idea how they had managed to find her body intact.

Four knocks announced the 10:30 mark, and Joan felt ready and with a clear enough mind to receive her first and most interesting patient yet.

"Come in," Joan instructed and a male nurse brought Faye inside. Joan smiled at the nurse, and led Faye to the couch off to the side of her office and welcomed her to sit down. Faye allowed herself to be walked and managed like a lifeless doll, but with some mechanical function to allow the more complicated movements of turning around and wiping her nose. Her green eyes were a bit dull, and her dark shoulder-length hair was stringy and filled with a pungent animal scent. Faye still wore the light green hospital robes and white bathrobe. She looked so numb that Joan figured they had probably pumped her with enough neurocleptics to last her a month. She had stopped it as soon as she learned of it, which had only been Friday. She asked that the psychiatrist look at Faye again, and sure enough, he re-assigned her some anti-psychotics rather than the brusque doses that were better used on the wilder patients. As far as Joan was concerned, she hadn't heard of Faye showing anything but symptoms part of a delusional psychosis and PTSD.

"Hi Faye, I'm Doctor Joan Bower, but you can call me Joan, okay?" Bower kept her eyes fixed on Faye. Faye glared back through glazed and angry eyes. "I know you must be scared Faye, but I was hoping we could talk."

Faye was definitely non-responsive, and Joan felt a pang of sorrow for her, something she hadn't usually allowed to torment her. She had seen enough sad cases, and the last time she had allowed a person to faze her emotionally had been way before her divorce.

"Faye, would you like to tell me about Spike?" Bower asked her, and noticed that Faye's green eyes began to water. "Why does that make you sad?" Bower asked. Faye didn't answer, but stared intensely at her. The glazed look faded, and was replaced by a frigid fierceness. She was getting ready to attack.

"Faye, I want to help you. That's why I am here. I know that the trauma from the Cryogenic sleep must have been very hard. I want to help you." Bower coaxed her, but with a menacing awareness of Faye's sudden anger.

"Why are you doing this?" Faye asked her, and Bower narrowed her blue eyes.

"Why am I doing what?" Bower asked, and Faye's glare fell off to the bottom right corner. "Faye, do you think we're doing something to hurt you?" Joan felt sick asking that question, and that was all the distraction Faye needed. She lunged down and then came back up with Joan's sharp letter opener in hand, and ready to be jammed into Joan's throat. Joan sucked in breath, and realized it must have fallen down with the pile of papers. She must have missed it. She shouldn't have been so caught up in her bullshit this morning.

"Faye, don't do this. You're not going to kill me." Bower insisted. Faye may have been delusional, but Joan doubted that this eighteen-year old was traumatized enough to be a murderer. "I know there's a bit of Faye Morgan left in you, so please, don't do this." Bower wasn't begging as much as she was buying time. She had already pressed the emergency button on the clinic bracelet they had given her when they first employed the system five years ago.

"I want you to let me the fuck go! I want to get out of here." Faye hissed in her ear.

"And we will Faye, once you're better. Once you're better." Bower responded uncertain of it herself. "I want to believe what you've told people Faye, but it's hard for me to believe you if you do something like this." The moment Bower finished her sentence, the door swung open, and a dart was shot into Faye's right leg. She immediately collapsed, and Joan swallowed and pushed down the fear she had been holding in chest.

"You all right?" One of the male nurses that had come to her rescue asked. Joan nodded, and immediately sat down. "Put her in room A." She instructed them and then waved them off. Faye would spend a week in that padded room until she became accustomed to the new anti-psychotics. For now, Joan needed to be alone, and drink a cup of coffee followed by a long cigarette break.

_Week 4_

"This is your room," A large nurse escort told Faye opening a door at the end of the long white hall of the second floor of the psych ward. The room had a twin bed with white sheets, a pillow, a flat digital clock built into the wall, and nothing else. There was a camera in the right corner of the room by the door that she didn't notice until she was in the bed. It was too tall for her to reach.

"How long will I be here?" Faye asked the nurse, and the nurse pursed her lips.

"Lunch and dinner are in the mess hall, and breakfast is brought to you with your meds every morning at nine. Lunch is at 12:30, and dinner is at 5:00. You will start your weekly therapy sessions next week, and will be expected every afternoon in the rec room to do activities with the rest of the women here. You can only take baths under supervision and those take place from 10 to 12. If you miss it, then you don't bathe." The woman told her the recipe of a patient's life without so much as a pause, and then closed the door behind her.

The nausea and claustrophobia began to rise from her stomach from staring at the bare walls in her room. Faye decided to leave the claustrophobia behind and wander about in the hallway. She checked out the rec room and its ordinary walls, as pale as her skin, ordinary tables, plastic chairs, shelves with books, and the worn faces that lingered about them. That kept her mind her own inner turmoil, but not this madness—scared of that one's red hair, and that other one's tantrums, and all the rest of women incarcerated here. But above all she was scared of their eyes and that intense reality in them. Faye had unwillingly begun to believe that she had in fact dreamed it all up. All she needed to figure out was which part was the dream, the Bebop, or this.

"Oh Jesus, another one." Faye heard a voice utter behind her as she walked down the hall towards the mess room. She turned around and met with another woman with dark brown hair shoulder-length, a messy masculine cut and gray eyes. The woman was wearing pink scrubs just like her.

"Are you talking about me?" Faye asked somewhat annoyed with the sudden intrusion to her tour.

"Yeah, I am. What brings you to our sunny little inn?" The woman caught up with her, and Faye resumed walking with this new marauder by her side.

"They think I'm crazy." Faye muttered monotonously.

"Of course they do." She smirked, but her eyes remained cold—a hint of calculated observation.

"Why are you here?" Faye's curiosity crept out from beneath her annoyance.

"Recruitment." The woman propped her shoulders up, and laughed slightly. "Apparently, if you're a nobody, you're liable to become property of the military. And you?"

Faye narrowed her eyes at her. "I'm not--," She stopped herself realizing she was in fact a 'nobody' or too many somebodies. "I fell asleep, and they woke me up."

"That's one I haven't heard before." Her gray eyes suddenly fell and her cynical smile faded. She shook her head. "My name's Electra."

"I'm Faye." Faye uttered the letters gradually and quietly.

"So really, why did they put you here, Faye? You don't sound so crazy to me." Electra examined her slowly.

"I could ask you the same thing." Faye avoided the question, not because she didn't want to answer, but her curiosity had overpowered her. She wanted to know what other people were here for, because perhaps that would lead her to answering why she had joined them. Electra didn't respond, but instead pulled up the sleeves from her pink scrubs. The sleeves concealed two thick scars running down from the wrist to mid-arm.

"And that was just one method to my madness." She added pulling her sleeves back down. "Funny thing is that I don't even remember doing it." Faye wanted to ask why, and what could lead her to do such a thing, but she decided against it. Her curiosity didn't extend that far. She now wanted to know as little as possible of this woman. The less she knew the less real the dream. "And you?" Electra reminded her she still needed to answer.

"I think this is all just a dream. I'm waiting to wake up. I'm waiting and waiting." Faye answered nostalgically. She noticed Electra's expression sober up. Then, she suddenly shook it off and smiled at Faye.

"That's a good way of looking at it," Electra added, and they continued from then on to walk in silence.

After a full tour of the facilities, Faye went back into her room. She hadn't wanted to talk to any of the others either. She needed to concentrate in remembering the Bebop, and Jet, and Ed, and Spike. But above all, she needed to concentrate on remembering Faye Valentine. She couldn't forget another one of 'her' again. But she was slowly forgetting. The drugs pilfered through her memories and sifted out bits and pieces of it. They had taken Jet's nose, Ed's eyes, and Spike's lips along with them. Features were undulating out of her mind and disappearing.

A nurse knocked on her door, and warned her that dinner would soon be ready. She also added that this was the only time they would tell her, and she needed to check on her own from then on. For some reason after the nurse left, Faye had the sudden urge to cry again. The urges surfaced and drowned again as they pleased, constantly tormenting her, and rendering her more inept than she had ever felt before. It was better though than the panic attack that happened two weeks before.

At dinner, Electra sat at her table along with her, but didn't say anything. They served their dinners in red trays, a cold bun with a watery lentil soup, and an apple. It was better than the cold oatmeal from this morning, so she ate contentedly. What bothered her is that by her plastic cup of juice there was a pink oval pill. Faye glared at the trays of everyone else, and noticed she was the only one who had been given a pill at all. Faye held it up between her thumb and her forefinger and examined it. Electra glared at the pill and then at her.

"The General will come for you tonight." She muttered, her silvery eyes entranced by the pill.

"Who's the General?" Faye asked her, a sudden sharp pain pinging in her chest.

"The General will comfort you tonight." Electra muttered again, and resumed eating her soup. Faye then realized that Electra had in fact both times said "comfort" and not "come for." The General would comfort her tonight.

_Day 22_

Faye woke up abruptly from an empty sleep. She had closed her eyes last night, and a minute later she had opened them up and it was already morning. Once she scanned her surroundings she gasped inwardly. The soft cotton sheets and the thick silver comforter were unfamiliar to her. The comfort of the large feather pillows beneath her only frightened her. She didn't recognize the Gauguin print on the left white wall, or the iron candle holder hanging on the opposite wall. She was still wearing her scrubs from last night, and as far as she knew nothing had happened.

Had she been dreaming again?

The white wooden door swung open and in came a tall handsome man with raven hair and light gray eyes. He headed towards the bed, but made no gesture to near her. He wore a black military outfit with trench coat on top. His eyes, his features, they looked so familiar. They were on the tip of her memory, almost there, wanting to be remembered, but she just couldn't.

"Hello Faye, I'm glad you're awake. You've been brought here, because I want you to know that you're important to us. Things will get better, when you get better." His low masculine voice uttered rather gently.

"Who is this '_us'_exactly?" Faye questioned between clenched teeth. She hoped he hadn't done anything to her, or any other woman, because she would come back for him. Yes, she would, and then he would never do anything again that involved a woman. But his face remained serious, he wasn't bragging, he wasn't intimidating her. He was merely informing her.

"You will soon find out. I want you to stop this nonsense though. I don't think you're crazy, Faye. I think you know well how things work. So you need to stop this."

Who the hell did he think he was? As much as she wanted to just lunge at him, she remained still in the bed. Soon after he was done speaking, two men in white came in to escort her back to the psych ward. She eyed the General carefully as she went out, still wondering what memory he might have triggered that she had found herself unable to access. He stared back at her, his light eyes with some extrasensory field that was completely unreadable to her.

They forced her gaze away from his, and led her out of the room. As they walked through hall after hall, and down floor after floor, she realized that this room was located on the complete opposite end of the facility and away from the ward. As they waited in an elevator, it stopped at the fifth floor—they were coming down from the tenth—to let in another group of people.

"This way, Dr. Al Hedia." A fair-skinned man in a white coat led another one in a similar attire, except this man had olive skin, and his lips were settled in this peculiar smile. "The General is waiting upstairs."

Faye observed Dr. Al Hedia, who from the corner of his eyes glared back at her curiously. They finally reached their destination at the second floor, and led her out of the elevator. Dr. Al Hedia's smile widened at her slightly, and he nodded very discreetly. She never forgot his face since then.

_Month 3_

They weren't allowed many windows, but the facility, wherever it was and whatever it was, had its own little park. The only row of windows in the psych ward and found only in the rec room faced that bit of green, and the trees stretched tall beyond the second floor so that all she could see was rows of trunks and two benches from where the stony path within it split. Faye was no expert at what the trees were, maybe an oak, but it made no difference. It was the only green, vibrant sight that reminded her that there was a world full of colors outside of this white one.

Faye began to ponder about the color green as she gazed out the barred window. Green was the color of her eyes, and the color of Jet's bonsais. Green and blue was how the earth looked from high above, and also the hue Spike's dark hair would turn under the yellowish lights of the Bebop. Yellow was her outfit. Yellow with a red sweater. Red was the color of Ed's hair, Spike's Swordfish II, and of Julia's lips. Her hair was blonde too, and her car! Julia's car was a red convertible. She had helped Julia when they were chasing her, and Julia gave her the message for Spike. Then Spike went, and he returned, and left again, and she—and she—had she woken up? Had Spike been right?

It had all been a dream.

"Faye?" Five fingers squeezed her shoulder. "You're shaking." Wanda, one of the nurses, informed her. Faye glared down at her pale hands, thin and jittery and with dark veins protruding—an old woman's hand whose skin had been stretched—but even if the skin could be rejuvenated to some extent, nothing could cure the arthritis consuming it from beneath. How old would Faye really be today? What was the year again?

"Did they start you on another med for your insomnia?" Wanda asked, and Faye shrugged.

Since that night before meeting the General, and like the nights before then, she had gone back to not being able to sleep. They gave her pill after to pill to help her, but the insomnia wouldn't recede back from wherever it had stemmed from. They finally gave her something that they told her would be a while until the effects occurred, so she waited patiently the entire week for the sleep to return. If she didn't sleep, she wouldn't dream, and if she didn't dream, then she would never know which one was the dream. She needed to sleep and wake up, and go back to wherever she belonged. That's all she wanted. That's all she had ever wanted. She didn't care if that meant going back to 2016, or if that meant the Bebop, or what. She just wanted something to be real.

_Month 4_

The sleepless nights had stopped. A pill had finally worked. After so many of them, she didn't know which one did the trick, nor did she care. The point was that she slept now, but nothing had changed. She didn't dream, so it was like she never really slept. Just shut her eyes, and felt a bit rested, but not really asleep.

"Why do you think they're keeping us here for so long?" Electra asked her, and then threw a small pea at Faye. "Are you even listening?" Faye wiped the cheek where the pea had pelted her, and shook it off her lap where it landed. "Are you going to eat that?" Electra pointed at her dinner roll, and Faye shook her head. "I mean I understand why they're keeping you here, but I'm better." Electra added scooping the roll up and placing it on her napkin on her dinner tray.

"What do you mean you understand why they're keeping me here?" Angered suddenly fueled her to join the conversation.

"After all those meetings, you keep telling the doctor about the whole fantasy world you created while you were asleep. They're never going to let you out." Electra waved her spoon carelessly.

"What the fuck do you know?" Faye scoffed. She was tired of Electra's constant nuances.

"Faye." Electra dropped her spoon and addressed her with urgency. "This isn't a dream, and you're not fucking sick, and neither am I. They're using us." She whispered hoarsely.

"I'm forgetting, Electra. I'm forgetting that other world slowly." Faye sighed.

"Well, good. I hope you forget all of it." She muttered.

"Why'd you do it?" Faye narrowed her verdant eyes at her. Electra glared what with defiance in her light gray eyes as if asking 'do what?' "Why did you do _it_?" Faye aspirated her last 't' and pointed at Electra's wrist.

"I guess I was in a Special Forces team, and there was this war. It was a war with no people, and I fell in love with a man that betrayed me." Electra's hand formed slowly into a fist squeezing the remainder of the golden dinner roll in her hand. Faye immediately wanted her to stop, and she didn't have to ask. Electra dropped the bread, stood up, and left for her room. As Faye stared at the brown glossy hair growing distant down the hall, she thought of Julia and Spike and Vicious.

Had Spike betrayed Julia? No, it made no sense to have one woman and two men. But anything could have happened. Faye couldn't imagine anyone being in love with Vicious, or Vicious loving anyone, so she supposed Julia must have been with him first. Then Spike came in, and he fell in love with her, and she must have loved him back. Tensions between the two men that already existed probably exploded. She figured Julia must have been with Vicious first, because he seemed like the type of man that would be good to ally yourself with. He would protect you, if you were useful to him back—whatever useful meant.

_Stop it._ Electra was right, she needed to forget.

"Did you envy Julia?" Dr. Bower had asked her in the last session.

"What?" Faye rose up suddenly from her bed. Dr. Bower had decided to do personal room sessions with Faye after the incident in her office.

"Well, from the way you described her…" Dr. Bower didn't finish her sentence. Faye immediately questioned the insinuation with rising annoyance.

"What do you mean how I described her?" Green fury sizzled in her glare.

"A blonde beauty, an angelic devil, or a devilish angel. She took Spike from you." Dr. Bower carefully noted.

"He wasn't mine to begin with!" Faye enunciated the word "mine" by punching her chest, and after that she gasped bringing her hand to her mouth. She had said too much. She had leapt up in wild anger and said too much. "I want you to get out." Faye added in a lower tone and sitting back down on her bed. Dr. Bower simply observed her. "Get out." Faye repeated this extending her arm and pointing at the door.

"Okay Faye, see you next week." The minute the door shut behind the doctor, Faye couldn't hold it in any longer and the tears fled from her eyes urgently, seeking the freedom she could not have.

It had to be a dream. It had to be a dream, because Faye Valentine would never cry like this, and because right now she must have been asleep in the Bebop. Nothing in this world could be worse than this. Not the dying, and the moon, and the cryogenic freeze, and the debt, and the bounty hunting. If she didn't get out of here, she was going to die.

_Week 14_

The bullets echoed all around them, and their hearts drummed with adrenaline. They both had guns in their hands, and she had become fully aware of the resolve pounding in him. It rippled in his dark brown eyes with every pull of the trigger. Every time, he wanted it to be him. Him. Vicious. Her long mane left a golden trail behind her as they ran up the stairs escaping out of the convenient store. She had pistol in her hand now, and he still carried his rifle killing off the men that bombarded them with bullets from the streets. It all occurred so fast the moment they stepped outside. The bullets were everywhere, and they both shot at all the sources. She fell hard against the concrete bridge linking the two buildings while Spike turned around and killed the man that had followed them. How did he miss that last one? What happened?

She stood up and brushed back the intrusive golden locks that had gathered around her eyes. The bullet came out of nowhere, and so did the man that shot it. Spike killed him and then gasped realizing he had been too late, and ran towards the fallen Julia. The bullet perforated through her lung and nested itself there. The pain went by, and the coldness and numbness set in quickly thereafter. The raindrops pelted her face as her heart slowed down. Spike held her in his trembling arms not entirely sure of what was happening. Her red lips parted, and the soft words slipped out before those verdant eyes finally shut out the life that had quickly left her.

"This is…just a dream…" She whispered. Spike had nothing else to say but to affirm it.

"Yeah, just a bad dream."

----

"Doctor Bower!" Tina, the clerk nurse, came running towards Joan as she walked down the hall towards the rec room.

"What is it?" Joan detected the urgency in her voice and eyes.

"It's the sleeper. She's having an attack of some sort. She's just woken up, and she won't stop screaming." Bower didn't wait for the nurse to finish before she started rushing towards Faye's room. When she arrived, two nurses held Faye firmly down as Tina rushed with a needle in hand to give to the doctor. Bower waved her off.

"I don't want to give her that." Bower shouted as she observed Faye's agitation and her face red and glistening from tears. "Let her go." The nurses glared at Bower with mouth agape, and remained frozen in their restraining force. "I said, let her go!" Bower commanded and pushed the nurses out of the way. Faye's body trembled but her arms lay in the same position that the nurses had held them down.

"Faye?" Bower sat down by the bed and touched her shoulders. "Open your eyes, Faye." Faye didn't respond, but just sobbed harder. "Faye, it's just a dream."

Her lids flew open revealing two horrified verdant eyes. Faye slowly began to shake her head from side with side with an incredulous grimace.

"No, it was so real." Faye darted her eyes away from the doctor and towards the white walls. "Julia, she died. I wasn't there, but I saw, and I knew." Faye paused letting the choking realization set in.

"You knew what, Faye?" Bower's heart beat with anticipation. It had never happened before. She had never been ridden with an instinctual curiosity that sought to know more about a person not for medical purposes, but for a deeper personal discovery she had rejected for herself.

"That it was all a dream." Faye shouted her response a second time as if she needed to hear it herself. "All just a dream." She threw herself at Joan and clung to her shoulders. Faye wasn't crying anymore, but she needed someone to hold on to and to reiterate this new reality she had come to accept. Joan held her, and stroked her stringy hair saddened by Faye's discovery rather than relieved.

"Yes, it was all just a dream." Joan repeated the melancholic words.

That had been one of the worst mornings of her life. Joan had no idea why exactly, and she ought to know after all she was the psychologist. However pleased she should have been with Faye's sudden leap towards recovery, Joan took it as a rather bitter betrayal. She hadn't seen it coming. The way she had planned out Faye's therapy she had figured it would take her a long while to grow accustomed to the new world, especially because Faye had lived in a completely foreign environment. She was a ghost of the past, and that she would concoct a dream that would allow her to belong in this world seemed a natural response. The breakthrough startled Joan, almost as if she had nothing to do with it. Perhaps a part of her had even grown to believe part of Faye's fantasy world.

Joan glanced over at the silver clock on the wall. It was sixty-thirty and she ought to be leaving. She was dissatisfied though, and she couldn't just leave like that. She opened up Faye's chart sitting in front of her and dug through it. A name Faye had mentioned in their fifth weekly session dangled off the page into the second one. The father-figure, she had written, the real hero versus the actual tragic hero—Jet Black. The ex-cop that had taken in all the strays. The instinctual curiosity returned again and this time as a heavy excited pang in her mind. She picked up her phone receiver and dialed. A man's throaty voice answered.

"Landesman, it's Joan. I need you to look up something for me. No, it's not for medical purposes. I'm asking a favor. I want to keep this between the two of us." She summoned her business tone for the request.

"No problem, Joan. What is it?" Sergeant Landesman complied without so much as a pause.

"I need you to look a name up for me. Jet Black. Do MPS, and search ISSP or anything else." The sergeant agreed and asked her to give him some twenty minutes and then he would call back. "No, I'll come down. I'll bring you some coffee."

Joan knew that she wouldn't be able to sit in her office during the time he searched. She had naively done this before, searched for one of the names Faye had given her. The curiosity that this uniquely complex fantasy had brought about didn't want to subside. Joan wanted if not needed to know more about the tragic hero, Spike, the female ideal, Julia, but above all, the fatherly hero, Jet. It was the name 'Bebop' that Joan had searched for and found no records for a ship with that name. She had reprimanded herself for being so preposterously gullible as to think such a thing would exist, but it had sounded a bit amazing at first. Here was a cryogenically revived corpse naming current technology like she had grown up with it. But Faye had been in a coma-like state while the specialists repaired her body, and the chamber in which they kept her in wasn't exactly soundproof. Any information they mentioned or if they had a television or radio on, phone conversations, anything and she could have used it in her fantasy.

Rationalization for Faye's unsettling amount of information on the present and disregard for her own past was all the scientific reassurance that Bower had.

After entering through two security clearance areas, Joan finally made it to Landesman's area. He was the only one around in the swing shift, and Joan did not want records printed or sent to her about any search.

"So, any hits?" Joan asked as she handed the cup of coffee she had brewed at the nurses' lounge. She honestly hadn't expected him to say anything, or she would have practiced her nonchalance a bit more.

"Actually yeah, nothing on military personnel, but a hit off ISSP." When Joan didn't respond, the sergeant added, "I didn't think you would be so surprised."

"No, it's—what does it say?" She stuttered a bit. Landesman sipped some of his coffee and instructed her to come around.

"There he is," He pointed at the picture of a somewhat balding man with dark skin and eyes. "Jet Black, retired from ISSP, he used to be a homicide detective within the agency. Retired when he lost an arm in an incident."

"And now has a cybernetic arm." Joan whispered as she stared incredulously at the screen. She couldn't tell anyone about this.

_Week 15_

"Electra!" Faye knocked on Electra's door. It was around 6:30 in the morning. "Go to the bathroom, Electra." And then she ran off to the only place Faye knew they didn't have cameras, the small bathroom with two stalls, and no mirrors. The toilets, the sinks, and even the doors were sensor-activated.

"Jesus Faye, it's six-fucking-in the morning. We have five minutes—tops—before a nurse comes after us." Electra came half a minute after Faye had called for her.

"Have you ever woken up before six?" Faye urgently asked her.

"What?" Frustration and weariness glazed Electra's gray eyes.

"I'm serious, have you ever woken up before six in the last two months?" Faye grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her a bit.

"No, I don't think so. What about it?" Electra pushed one of Faye's hands off her.

"Don't you find that odd?" Faye insisted. Electra shook her head. "I have a bruise. I noticed it yesterday, on my left side." Faye rubbed her hand under her breast right on her ribs.

"I have it too. It's probably electro-shock therapy or something. They do it in our sleep."

"I need your help. I know you know this building, and how it works. I need to get back to Dr. Bower's office. I want to know what they're doing to us." Faye stole a glance towards the door worried that their time was running out quicker than she had anticipated.

"Faye, if they catch you, they'll put you in solitary. _I_ haven't even been to solitary, but you don't come back from it. Ever." Electra's senses had snapped awake.

"Just because they woke me up doesn't mean that they can own me. I can't just sit here and be the military's fuck toy." Faye hissed back, and then softened her features from the contorted angry gestures. "Please."

Before Electra could respond, the door opened abruptly and nurse's head peered inside. Faye and Electra nodded and the both headed towards the door which the nurse was holding open.

"You know the rules. No congregating in the bathroom." The nurse muttered in sordid tone as they walked out. Faye turned to Electra one last time.

"Please." She whispered before she entered into her room to wait for her breakfast there. She hoped and even prayed to a God she didn't think existed for Electra to help her.

_Week 16_

She didn't know why she had agreed, and as she stared at the clock she felt herself more nervous each minute that passed. How had she agreed to this? They were lucky that Electra even woke up in time to carry out the plan. She had left Faye a map in the Jane Austen book on the shelf in the rec room, but she didn't even know if Faye had understood it. In fact, she wasn't even sure if the map was all that correct. The cold set into nervous shivers, and she opened her eyes slightly to check the clock. Two minutes to 6:30 in the morning. That's the time they had agreed. The secondhand dragged her nerves across the room, and her heart sped up twice as fast. She wasn't scared anymore. She was excited. It pounded with excitement because if Faye found what she needed to find, then maybe they would know once and for all why they were here. They would know if there was a way to get out, and Electra wanted more than anything to get out.

In the last minute remaining, she remembered the clandestine missions she had carried out. She remembered her tact, her preciseness, and her ability to keep focused on the target. If it hadn't been for him, she would have never changed. She would have never been like this. The seconds counted down in her mind, and when the time struck she opened her eyes to see 6:30 and screamed. She screamed as loud as she could, and began to shake. Her hands gripped onto the bed she pushed herself forward, screaming, her heart drumming hard against her chest, her excitement pouring out in tears. Two minutes passed and the nurses on the floor came rushing towards her. It would take the last one of them at least ten minutes to get the sedative prepared.

"They've come for me!" Electra yelled pushing one of them off. They called her name, and shouted for her to calm down. They pressed the full force of their bodies on her but she fought, the adrenaline kicking in just then, pumping faster and an amount of energy she hadn't felt in months.

The nurse with the air injection came in, a small plastic tube with the sedative compressed inside. All she needed was contact with Electra's skin and one push and the sedative would spread. Electra kicked the sedative out her hand and sent it rolling in one corner of the floor. She had hoped that then Faye would have already slipped by unnoticed. She could only hope.

Her tears were running dry, and though her adrenaline still kicked, the nurse made contact with her left arm. Electra hadn't even noticed when they made the exchange and suddenly it was the nurse closest to her that had it. She had lasted twenty minutes though, and that should have been more than enough she told herself as the sedative slithered into her bloodstream.

She heard a ghastly silence followed by distant screams. They weren't her screams. She had stopped the minute the nurse had won, and she just shook thereafter from the surge of the adrenaline. No, she recognized those muffled angry shouts. She had heard very similar ones the day of Faye's dream. The first and only dream she had even had in this place.

As Electra drifted from consciousness, she wished, if not pleaded, to herself that Faye had been right. For the first time, Electra hoped it was all true and that this was all dream.

Faye's screams drowned out and Electra's hope and excitement went with it. Her last thought before she drifted out of consciousness was that of the rumored solitary confinement. The place where they said they had taken two patients before. The place they would take Faye. The place she would never come back from.


	2. Prologue

This is the full-on multi-chaptered story, and it takes off from here rather than the one-shot preceding (I guess it's not a one-shot anymore). This is just a prologue, so don't worry things will get explained. I hope you enjoy, and thank you so much to all the people that supported Heroes Don't Exist, the short story. This first part before the prologue starts is an epigraph that if it were an actual book, it would go on a separate page, so imagine it for me. I would also like to thank you (you know who you are) for your input, your support, and your wonderful suggestions.

* * *

**PART I: ALBA**

"Look where we all three are. Utterly disabused, and yet we can't decide anything. This evening the pure in heart have simply got us on toast. And look at the fun she has—she lives in a world of heroes. Who are we to be sure they're as phony as we all think? If the world's really a stage, there must be some big parts. All she asks is to walk on at the same time. And how right she is really—failing the big character, better (at least arguably) the big flop than the small neat man who has more or less come off. Not that there is, really, one neat unhaunted man. I swear that each of us keeps, battened down inside himself, a sort of lunatic giant—impossible socially, but full-scale—and that it's the knockings and batterings we sometimes hear in each other that keeps our intercourse from utter banality."

Elizabeth Bowen, _Death of the Heart_

* * *

**Heroes Don't Exist**

**Prologue**

It's July 22, 2072, but you hate keeping track of dates. Numbers and months and cycles all serve as a reminder of the person you have never been. Spending summer in Alba has never been pleasant, but you didn't know that personally until last year. This year the heat is worse. In reality, it is winter for this side of Mars, and so the thin veil of the crater's clouds must compensate by raising the temperatures or the whole city would freeze. They fail to balance out between the heat on the inside and the cold on the outside. The city suffers a fever for four months out of the year. The weather center tries its best with the scheduled showers in the early mornings and slight breezes during the day, but the heat clings to skin in sticky beads of sweat.

When you enter your apartment, it is cold. Too cold for your body to accommodate the sudden temperature change, so it sends a tremble rippling throughout the nerves of your body. You shut the door behind you quickly, fearing that the humid heat might follow you in hiding in your shadow. The cold tingles on your damp skin, and your hands instinctively wrap themselves protectively around you. That's when you feel the sharp pain underneath the shoulder blade stinging the capsule of the joint, extending, like electricity through a wire, down your arm and concentrating at the wrist. Your neck also twitches with every movement, and your hands resignedly drop to the sides. Too late. You remember the pains you had suppressed for the sake of making it home without tears, without sobbing, without the failure of today's events manifesting physically. Your thoughts in your mind dominated for the last hour, but your body cannot keep quiet any longer. It seeks your attention through a pain that ravenously attacks your muscles as the cold settles on your damp skin, penetrates the thin pale layer, and sticks to your bones.

Your body has grown stiff from the ache of your shoulder. You cannot move left or right, forward or backward, or even stand still. He may have dislocated it. You may have done it to yourself when you threw a desperate punch from a bad angle, another offensive move made too quickly while attempting to escape. The plan had failed completely. He had known about you, and you should have expected that. You should have expected how frightened you would feel to face with that sort of man-demon. You never imagined you were that weak, and it's not your fault you didn't remember the fear you felt in your dreams. You have no control over that region of your mind. You never did.

The air conditioner turns on and a waft of air from the vent near the door brings back his scent over your body. You hurry towards the bathroom and you shed your clothes urgently as if something lethal has spilled all over the fabric and you must get it off immediately. It hurts to pull your clothes off, but not as much as it hurts to slowly twist your arm to turn the faucet on. You only turn the knob that releases the hot water.

The temperature of the shower feels like it pierces your skin. You turn around and open the coldwater faucet, this time with your other arm, which doesn't ache nearly as bad as the left one. The circular motions are slow and precise in order to measure how much cold will make the temperature just a little above bearable. You stop, because your skin—reddened by the heat—has grown accustomed to it already. You dunk your head underneath the steady flow of water and the steam that rises causes a kind of drunken stupor as it relaxes the muscles in your body. Of course, he didn't dislocate your shoulder. You wouldn't be able to move your arm if that was the case.

You press a palm against the slippery tiles and dip your head farther down that if possible it would disconnect from your neck. You think you're going to cry. You think it's all going to come out of you and that you won't be able to stop it. But a calm hum settles over you as the steam obfuscates your entire surroundings. You realize you cannot just stop at this point. You have faced all your fears now, and there is little else to lose.

After one long hour of dousing yourself with the purifying hot water, holy water, cleansing water, you feel fresh and strong again. You feel redeemed as if five thousand woolongs a month of synthetic water could baptize you and renew your soul. On earth the water was real, wasn't it? On earth, the water was still pure and a miracle of the atmosphere, the weather, of wells underneath the dark soil and even from atop the highest peaks on land. It was everywhere. The earth was almost like a human being of its own, mostly made out of water, requiring it, needing it to survive, and the people—its people—made synthetic veins—canals, aqueducts, and pipes underneath its skin—and drained its life out. Not completely, it didn't come to that, because we turned the world dark before that could happen. We took out the moon.

You have forgotten what the world was like when there was a moon.

You sigh, realizing that you're attempting to distract yourself and that nothing useful ever came out of trying to be philosophical about life. Reality can't be degraded to metaphors and theories, because it is as it is and no one can explain it. No one can explain to you why you're here, so never mind metaphors and symbolisms. They simply mask and romanticize something dark within you, something destructive, but at the same time something that yearns to survive.

Stop, you tell your thoughts and push your palm against the bathroom mirror. You wipe the thick layer of fog that settled on it. The streaks of wet made by your fingers still obscure your face, and even if you could see it clearly it doesn't mean that you would recognize it. You tried so hard to recover from the dreams, to convince yourself none of that was real, only to then find out it was true. Then you tried hard remembering your dreams, you still do, but the flashbacks come when they wish. In the process, you buried your real past along with the dreamed up one.

You turn away from the mirror to open the cabinet to find a change of clothing, and an extra gun cartridge taped to the side of the cabinet. You have to live like that. With clothes tucked here and there along with your gun. The key to survival is clean clothes and a weapon.

You dry your hair and start to comb it, and that's when you hear it. It was clear, but subtle—distant. It was one smack of a heel against something—a wall, a door, or a furniture piece. You turn the lights off and grab your gun at the same time. Your body still aches, but the adrenaline has begun to pump. The fear fuels you while you heart beats primitively urging you through its rapid rhythm. Each thump against your chest tells your body that you must do everything to survive. I will pump life, energy, and fear into you, your heart tells you, but you must run, kick, punch, do whatever it takes to survive this.

You thought of this before. You thought he might come after you—Vicious. The rage fuels you along with your fear, and you quickly grab your bracelet from the countertop and press the familiar green button you planned to use to for emergencies. A second after the sprinklers on the roof explode with water, you kick the door open, gun in hand, hoping that the water serves as a quick distraction. You hear noises and you have learned not to hesitate, so you shoot. You shoot because your heart is still pumping, still yelling that primeval call for survival.

You dash into the master room, and a shadow comes at you. You shoot again before it reaches you, and it falls next to the body of another one. You rush out of the room before the others (there are always others) come rushing into the room and corral you. By the time you reach the living room, you've hit two more men. Your eyes have adjusted to the dark and you're no longer killing shadows blindly. The light from the building's hallway enters through the living room window and spills into the dining room. You look around and you realize that there's a man emerging from the kitchen. You're about to pull the trigger, but he stops you.

"I've missed you." His voice stops you. Your heart pauses, because you can't breathe. There's no oxygen coming in. Your lungs are betraying you the same way you betrayed the man in front of you.

"I killed you." You don't believe in ghosts anymore.

"You didn't do a very good job. I taught you better." He comes towards you and though you are now breathing, your muscles only twitch every time you will them to exert, to run. He grabs your hand holding your gun, but you don't scream though you want to, need to. All you can do is utter his name—the name of the dead.

"Vincent."

* * *

The loud thump knocked him off the couch, which caused him to land on his scotch bottle, bruise his two lower left ribs and spill the last swallow on the carpet. The needles that streaked through the veins in his head quickly replaced any other soreness. New unbearable pain shot through his temples the moment he tried to open his eyes, and by that time the thumps were already diluting the little orientation he had left. He swallowed hard and tried to concentrate on the deafening noise. After a few more off-beat knocks, he discerned it was coming from the door.

Spike Spiegel became enraged. He glanced over at the clock on the wall and saw that it was five minutes until six in the morning—still dark. He could only think of one person who would even dare knock like that on his door.

"Maggie!" he yelled and quickly regretted the forceful movement of his jaw, which sent more pain to his temples. "All right," he whispered. The knocks became loud thuds—not knuckles against the hard wood of a door, but a full arm banging in a slow inconsistent beat. "All right!" he yelled when he reached the door and undid the bolt. The moment it cracked open, his mouth was already rounded and his tongue ready to whip curses, but he stopped and clamped it shut. The heat of adrenaline spread from his neck and the acidic taste of the rush permeated his mouth. Spike had sobered up quickly from his hangover.

He observed the figure in front of him as if she was a ghost, and as if this was a vision all over again. It wasn't and he knew it. He knew it from the smell of the blood and sweat, and a more subtle scent of puke coming from her.

"Help me," she whispered clutching her bleeding stomach and fell forward into his arms. A part of him still believed that it must have been a delusion, but the clammy feel of her skin and then the sudden warmth of her blood on him shocked him. He knew then that this time it wasn't a dream. What he saw a week ago wasn't a delusion, or a gut feeling. It was a premonition.


	3. Chapter 1: Time Transfixed

A quick apology, it seems it swallowed parts of this chapter. It's been fixed hopefully.

**Heroes Don't Exist **

Chapter 1: _Time Transfixed _

_July 18th, 2072_

They didn't serve alcoholic drinks at this place—that was the first problem. The second problem was that _Ellie's Diner_ attracted old people, the worst kind of old people. It's not that they smelled of pharmacy talcum powder and had syrupy breaths like that of old juice gone rancid in the fridge, but it was their eyes. It was the way the skin sagged at the corners and how the eye itself looked juicy, like in tears all the time. Even when they smiled over fat grandchildren's photos, or when they talked heatedly about politics, they had one emotion plastered on their face. So when Spike Spiegel ate a late lunch at Ellie's, he gulped his soda and his steak. If he ate too slowly, he would start tasting a tang that if he had to give it a name, it would be regret. Regret that collapsed on his food from the breaths rising from the tongue of old, out of its crypt, out of the memories buried in there and onto his food.

It was still better than eating at a bar, because they hardly had anything filling—even less a good steak—but feminine foods like salads, shrimp cocktails, and other finger-sized appetizers which he hated. But most of the bars he went to barely offered that, which was fine with him. Bars were a place to unfold in and become lost, not to nibble on things that after a few shots you'd think you were eating your own fingers.

As Spike waited for his food, he resolved this to be the last time he would ever step inside Ellie's because he couldn't take it anymore. He was slowly decaying like most of its frequenters and becoming a ragged old suit of himself consumed by the regret that would not leave him. He had shut the door on it billions of times to keep it from entering, but it had passed through his walls and stuck to his lungs making it heavy to breathe. But the resolve didn't simply emerge from a willful impulse within him. It was something else altogether.

"They have the best steak here," an old man with a red cap said. He sat with two other men chewing on his steak. He occasionally took in bites too big for his mouth, and when he did he would chew with it open, saliva glazing the inner outlines of his lips.

"No, they don't, remember Kobe's Steakhouse in Venus?" contested the man next to him. He had his fork pointed toward the man with the cap and with the other hand he tipped up the straw hat he was wearing.

"You've never been to Kobe's, Antonio. That place is too expensive," said the third man.

"That's crap! I've too been there. Unlike you two, I have some class. I took a lady friend there once. What was her name…"

"Ha! A lady friend!" yelled the first man after he was done with the food in mouth.

"You can't recall the name, because she never existed."

"Shut up, Jobin. I remember now." Antonio set down his fork. "Julia."

Between the steak-man and Jobin's snickering, Spike choked on his own saliva causing a fit of painful coughing

"No," said Antonio. "Not Julia—Julie. She had the most beautiful smile and her dark hair and that dark skin and…"

The old man's voice faded, and Spike panicked. He reached toward his glass of water and then took a big gulp. The itching and throbbing finally stopped and he was able to take a deep breath.

Julia. Spike coughed a little more and then began to laugh. The regret had already stuck to him before his food had even gotten there.

After his meal, he went home and with the memory of her blonde hair, of the jasmine scent of the shampoo she sometimes used and the soft wet taste of her painted red lips, he drank. He drank a good five-year old scotch he had been safe-keeping until he felt it a necessary measure. He lifted his hand out to the dusty dark air in his apartment and toasted—_to Julia_, he said—several times over until half the bottle was gone. His limbs gave out at that point and consciousness receded, leaving him alone and with sleep as the only option left for him.

He slept for eleven hours, a deep cold-sweat sleep. Spike woke up at noon with sudden burning in his esophagus, and he sprang to the bathroom where he threw up the water the scotch hadn't consumed yet, and also the steak and his regret, over the ceramic toilet bowl. He threw up until he thought he had no more to give up and then heaved and collapsed next to it. His throat ached and his tongue was like sand paper. Half an hour later, his legs found the strength to lift his hundred-eighty pound body off the ground and towards the bed. He needed to sleep some more, but then sudden ringing in his ear the minute he got up changed his mind. It sounded like the doorbell was constantly being pushed on, but when the ringing turned to pounding, he realized the noise wasn't from the hangover.

"I'm coming, Jesus Christ!" Spike yelled at the intruder and grabbed his gun off the counter table. He was going to shoot whatever asshole thought it smart enough to knock like that.

"Are you going to shoot me?" said a female voice once he opened the door. He glared at her light green eyes and annoyed expression and then down at the gun in his hand.

"What do you want, Maggie?" He said turning around to put the gun back on the kitchen counter.

"I heard your wonderful hangover requiem all the way upstairs, so I went out and got you supplies, because I know you have ketchup and beer in your fridge and that's about it." Maggie placed the brown bag she had been carrying next to the gun on the counter and began pulling out eggs and other paper containers of food. Spike grabbed a glass and the vodka from the freezer. He grabbed an egg, cracked it over the glass, and poured some vodka in it.

"Here," Maggie said placing the ketchup bottle and pepper canister in front of him. He finished preparing his prairie oyster and then gulped it down with one finger pinching his nose closed. "That's disgusting," she added and put some of the food she brought in the fridge. As soon as she lifted all the contents from the brown bag and threw that away in an overloaded trash, she noticed a half-opened envelope with the corner of a picture sticking out of it. She eyed it curiously and then as she picked it up, the old picture fell out.

"What's this?" Maggie asked, but Spike just shrugged and shook his head.

He had found it in the morning under his bed. It had been in a package dated almost a year ago and sent to the Bebop. With his curiosity overcoming him, he'd quickly ripped up the envelope. Out slid an old picture of girl standing next to a pillar with a lion-fish statue next to it and the sea behind her. Her hair was dark and cropped short and she was wearing a school uniform. Her head was tilted to the side, her green eyes shining and her lips showing a reticent smile. Spike flipped the picture over and found a small message scribbled on it. As soon as he read it, he flipped it back over to see if he could recognize the girl. No, there was no way he had even known her.

"A cousin?" she said examining the picture and then turned it over. "Find her." She read the message aloud and glanced up at Spike. "Find her?"

"Don't look at me. I don't know who the fuck that is. What are you making?" Maggie dropped the picture back on the counter and grabbed a bowl from behind her.

"I brought you some hot soup, figured you'd need it. Just look at you, not only are you a freeloader, but also a pathetic drunk." She scoffed and then proceeded to bunch her dark red hair with her hands while pulling with her teeth on a black band tightly bound around her wrist.

"Hey! Your father bought me this place as a thank you gift which I thoughtfully accepted, and it was by the way, for saving your life," Spike spat and turned towards the couch.

"Ha! As if the bounty hadn't been enough," she said adjusting stray hairs around her bun. "But, oh wait; I remember that drunken epiphany of yours."

"Don't go there, Mag, I have headache. No drunk stories, please," he begged and turned toward the door. "You left it open again. The heat is making me sick already." He headed toward it and stopped suddenly. A woman stood there, facing him, her dark green eyes fixated on him, her short dark hair dripping and her lips rounding out to say something. She wasn't really there. He could only see her out one eye, the right eye. In the left, he saw nothing but an empty hall flooded by the sun rays.

"Yes, don't you remember? You told me you knew exactly where to find the bounty, because I told you to come save me. You dreamt some crazy thing about the kidnapper," she laughed and then tried to continue, but Spike stopped her.

"Shut up!" He yelled his eyes fixated on the now completely empty spot. He rubbed his eyelids several times and then shut the door.

"Fucking hell, Spike. This is why I hate you when you drink."

Spike felt somewhat dizzy and he reached out to get his bearings and possibly reach the couch. He heard Maggie call for him and then she was at his side, holding him by an arm, and helping him toward the couch.

"You need to lie down. I'll get you that soup."

"Maggie," he grabbed her arm before she went to the kitchen. "Stop it. This gratitude shit, just stop it." She narrowed his eyes at him with a kind of pitying worry and then shook her head.

"I really hate you when you're like this." She pried her hand off him, headed toward the front door and left. He plopped himself on the couch and sighed, relieved that he had finally gotten rid of her. Just a few seconds after he closed his eyes, his body shot up again at the sound of his communicator ringing.

"For fuck's sake!" He yelled and walked toward his room to pick up the comm., lying on the floor next to his bed.

"Jet, now's not a good time," Spike said the minute the bald man with dark sideburns appeared on his comm.

"I just called to tell you I'm in Mars now, looking for a bounty on my own, but if it comes down to it I may need you as backup."

"Fine, call me then." Spike pressed the disconnect button and collapsed on his bed, but the comm. rang again. "Jet, I have a headache, call me when you fucking--,"

"Spike." Spike's eyes shot open with surprise. He stared at the young man in the screen in disbelief.

"Shin, you're alive."

"So are you." Shin smirked. "You weren't so tough to find though."

"You've been spying on me?" Spike chuckled, relieved and at the same time disconcerted to hear a ghost from his past.

"I wouldn't bother you if it was for nothing. I need to speak to you tonight." Shin's boyish smirk had faded and his light gray eyes now stared gravely at Spike.

"Fine, where?"

"Blue Phoenix on 6th at seven o'clock. Talk to the bartender." He hung up and Spike let his body fall back on the bed. For Shin to come back and risk exposure, especially since he was opposed to the coup and since he was the one that helped Julia infiltrate the Red Dragons seven months ago, it could only mean that Vicious was back. He was finally going to reclaim his position as head of the syndicate. Spike had known all along that the rumors were a lie. Despite Julia's best efforts, Vicious had survived.

After so many months of waiting, he would finally be able to face the man that killed Julia.

* * *

"What'll you have?" The bartender was a young lean Asian guy with a magazine cover smile and messy bed hair. His voice made him sound older than Spike and his black eyes looked dull under the dim bar lights. Behind him was a mirror wall reflecting the bottles sitting on the back counter and the crystal cups resting on shelves near the top. Spike could make out the shady faces of the men and women that occasionally stole glances his way, but never lingered too long, not only because they didn't quite recognize him, but because they didn't wish to be recognized themselves.

"I'm here for Shin," Spike said and the man straightened. As he headed to one end of the bar, he cocked his head to the side briefly, instructing Spike to come around the bar counter.

"He's waiting," the bartender said and pointed to the door at the very end of the mirror wall. "In there." As soon as the door opened, he found himself in an even bleaker and more secretive environment than the previous room. Shin was standing by to greet him and led him back to one out of the five tables in the small room. Among the backdoor amenities to the place were two televisions projected on the wall, one playing the current baseball game (Olympus Guardians v Ganymede Searats), and the other with basketball (he had never much kept up with any of those teams). The most interesting part was that the wall, which faced the bar was actually a two-way mirror in case—Spike felt sure—that the cops or somebody unexpected barged in and the players had to leave the premises through the back door.

"Your bet and your poison?" Shin asked. It was the condition for getting the ultimate privacy they needed. The rest of the players at the other tables had their headphones on, taking them off in intervals to idly chatter with each other.

"Whiskey and water and put me in for the Guardians," Spike said and Shin typed in his selection on the touch screen embedded on the table. "I need to know," Spike added, but cut himself off figuring that Shin would know what he meant. Shin glanced up with his jaw clenched and his gray eyes withholding some kind of horrible news within. Spike couldn't quite tell how much Shin had changed since he last saw him, but the boy certainly looked like a worn toy soldier and older than twenty-four, but that's what the syndicate life did to people.

"It's about him. He's back, isn't he? When did you receive word?" Spike grew anxious to hear the news. He wanted to know of the first chance he might be able to face Vicious.

"I just received news of his return last week, and I wasn't going to contact you until I knew when exactly he would be back in Alba. I'm not entirely sure that he's even on Mars, but the guys are cleaning up a lot of jobs and procedures. But that's not why I contacted you prematurely." Shin stopped as a waiter arrived with their drinks. Shin nodded to thank the man and then took of sip of his brandy. Spike didn't touch his whiskey. He simply gazed out toward the mirror, watching the bartender mix a martini.

"I intercepted a report about a month ago from the ISSP. I thought it was nothing, but when there was a second report and then a third, I started worrying." Shin cleared his throat. Spike didn't know what he was hiding, but he grew paranoid by Shin's obvious hesitance on the topic.

"Just tell me." Spike turned to him and Shin took a deep breath.

"It was of five murders of some prominent mafia members and one small time guy. They were all killed in the same way. Execution style, one shot straight through the head, a professional obviously." Shin finished the last of his brandy. Spike's chest began to pound with dread, heartburn rising in his throat.

"What the fuck are you saying, Shin?" There was a slight tremor in Spike's tone.

"That the deaths have been linked to the assassin Oracle," Shin paused for moment and as he began to continue, Spike interrupted him.

"That's impossible. You and I know that's not possible." Spike's fist tightened menacingly on the table.

"Listen to me, Spike, I know that. I wouldn't have bothered you if I didn't feel sure, but Oracle's known drop-account has seen activity in the last few months. There are people talking and," Shin said only to be interrupted by Spike's hoarse whisper.

"Stop it. It could be someone else. Someone else gained access to that account. It's a copy-cat!"

"I know that!" Shin burst from his seat, but then slowly sat back down. "The problem is who, Spike? Vicious?" Shin asked, but Spike didn't answer. His head and stomach were revolving with emotions that he couldn't contain. Why would Vicious do this? Simply to spite him? Simply to make Julia's death seem like it was nothing? Spike glanced away from Shin and to the two-way mirror. He watched the bartender busying himself with another drink, a Cosmo, and handed to a girl with short pink hair. Spike recognized the bell cloche hat, the long beaded necklaces and the lacy fabric of her dress as a high class prostitute's typical garment—the signature of an underworld bar. Spike's thoughts on Oracle as he watched her stopped the moment she propped up her head and he was able to gaze underneath the shadow of the hat. He now recognized that pointed chin with those eyes that he would bet on anything were green and those thin lips that pressed together as she regarded her face in the mirror.

"Spike? Aren't you at least curious?" Shin said followed by a small grunt.

"Yeah, but, hold on. Have you ever seen her before?" Spike pointed toward the girl as she coyly interrogated the bartender. The young man would simply shake his head or shrug every so often, and when he wasn't looking her face would contort to an exasperated expression.

"No, never, she's just an escort. This is what you're thinking about? An escort?" Shin scoffed.

"I have to go," Spike said as she dropped some money on the counter and began to leave. Shin grabbed him by the shoulder as he rose from his chair.

"Are you insane?" Shin muttered.

"I'll pay you back if I lose, keep it if I don't." Spike shook Shin's grip off his shoulder and headed out of the room. By the time, he opened the door, the girl had already walked out of the bar. The need to follow that girl and prove himself right had been overwhelming, but he also feared what it would mean if he were right. Wouldn't it be better if he was just insane? Wouldn't it be better if his mechanical eye was just malfunctioning? He shook his head as he exited to the streets, saying to himself that it was all just one big coincidence.

Spike finally caught up with her around the corner. She walked fast, but her shoulders had tensed, so she knew he followed her.

"I'm by appointment only," she said without stopping.

"I don't want an appointment. Were you shot?" He wanted to smack himself right there. That probably sounded horribly stupid to her.

"That is the worst pick up line ever," she said and reached under her dress. She whipped around with a small pistol in hand.

"Whoa, I didn't mean anything by it really," he said, lifting his hands in surrender. The girl tilted up her cloche hat revealing two deep and terrified green eyes. Her lips parted and her chin thrust forward slightly, but no sound came.

"Come closer," she finally said after a long pause. It looked as though she would cry. It had been Spike's experience in this kind of situation that a terrified girl holding a gun usually told a guy to back off. "Closer," she urged him, and he stood nearly two feet from her. Then she withdrew a few steps, the gun still steadily aimed at him. She recognized him, which meant that the mechanical eye probably hadn't been mistaken. He had just completely forgotten about her. It didn't make sense. Watching her face and those powerful eyes of her, you'd think anyone would remember them.

"It's you." Her voice trembled. She definitely knew who he was. "You killed Julia."

Usually, his body would have responded. He would have lunged at her, held his gun to her head and ask her all about Julia, but he stood motionless. His mind attempted to coordinate with his body how to react.

"Spike!" A voice shouted from behind him. This time his body responded and he turned around to face Shin. "What is wrong with you?" Shin ran towards him. Then suddenly, realizing he had control of his body again, he turned back to the girl, but she was gone. A fear crept in his bones, so he ran into the nearest alley. He saw her there climbing to the roof top and before he could start for the iron fire escape stairs, he heard the roaring of engines and a black monopod took off in the distance.

"What happened to you?" Shin asked, staring after the monopod as well. The humidity of the summer heat closed in on them like invisible walls.

"That girl in the bar, she knew Julia."

* * *

I'm back already, so soon after BP, I know. To those that reviewed the prologue, thank you. I'm sorry it's been a while. I owe a reviewer a bit of reading, so I promise I will do that this week. Thank you for reading (and reviewing!). Also, the painting below was my inspiration for this chapter.

Rene Magritte_ Time Transfixed_, 1939.


	4. Chapter 2: Morgan

Hoho, I'm back and it's not even been a month. Aren't you proud? I hope so. Now mind you, I have a gazillion classes and dozens of essays I'm constantly writing, so my brain is mush. But I guess be hard on me anyway. As I said before, I'm trying out different things with the narration in every chapter. I hope I don't beat you over the head with some of my descriptions, and advice is always welcome. Part of what makes this so speedy is no beta, so I use reviews and other comments as a point of revision. Don't be shy. **  
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Chapter inspired by Sarah Moon's _Morgan._ I apologize for not having a scan to show you, but check her out. Some of her photography is on the net.

As for _Time Transfixed,_ you know, I never really understood the significance of the time on the clock. Perhaps it is arbitrary (as time is a human concept) and only important in that it's part of the specified schedule of the train? I'm not sure.

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* * *

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**Heroes Don't Exist**

Chapter 2: _Morgan_

Faye Morgan, or Faye Valentine or just Faye, as she preferred to refer to herself lately in the mirror, entered her apartment with the rented furniture and the empty fridge. Not a completely empty fridge, for it had a bottle of water inside because she was always thirsty. She would walk down the streets, searching for the things she had spent the last few months searching, and she would have to stop and walk into a shop to buy another bottle of water. She would drink half the bottle in one gulp and continue on, searching during the day and aiming her gun during the night, and the last half of the bottle of water would take an hour to drink and then it would start all over again.

When she entered her apartment, it wasn't an apartment at all, but the black cavern of her mind in which Spike Spiegel's mismatched brown eyes glared at her with a demonic red glint in them. She never thought she would recognize him so readily, after all, during all those days since 2068, the year of her second birth and the only birth she really remembered, she had tried to summon up his image or his voice, but there was nothing. His name only lingered about in her mind like a detached limb, that if found on the street there wouldn't be a person that could point and say, "oh, I recognize the bone structure. That's Spike Spiegel's hand for sure."

But when she saw him, she recalled every inch of his face, the two peaks at the middle curve of his lips, the egg-shape of his eyes and his thin prim nose that would look more adequate on a woman than on him. Everything about him told her it was Spike Spiegel, and his voice and the confused arch of his brows only painfully confirmed it further. Right then, she had wanted to kill him. She didn't want him to exist, just like when she met Julia, she didn't want her to exist either. Those were characters of her dreams. She had spent so long locked up slowly trying to convince herself it was a dream only to find out it was true. Well, not all true, because she had never met them and had never been on the Bebop and never made Jet lose all his money that one night and never let Ed paint Faye's nails in different colors each, all except blue, and never fought with Spike until she almost shot him before he could go off and kill himself.

She guessed it made her precognitive, like a white crystal ball hiding the futures of others within her. It was Julia who first appeared and looked into the crystal ball, and saw her future and her death reflected in the glossy white surface and then decided that there was no use avoiding it. Her pale face and those deep blue eyes had etched into the surface of the crystal, and there she was with her golden Venus hair, lips stuck in mid-frown and dressed in all black, _Julia in Mourning_.

The ominous crystal ball, with the green eyes and who couldn't decide on a last name, could have stopped her. She could have said, "This future you see, you will die for nothing." But somehow Julia already knew it; she was seeking it, expecting it and to stop her would have been impossible. She would have found her way to him and her death eventually.

Faye, in her ominous crystal knowledge, then wondered why she had dreamt of them. Why in the moments of her birth it was their faces that had sprung forward in her mind. If her precognitive powers were not to stop their fate, then why did they exist at all? Was she still insane? Could she still be insane if the people in her dreams walked and talked and breathed in the world of everybody else?

She turned on the hall light, and the cavern disappeared.

Looking around the apartment with the foreign furniture and the almost empty fridge, she spotted her long rifle sitting on the oak coffee table where she'd left it in the morning. She thought of picking it up and calling Johann, the man that knew Spike's address and had known it for days and whom Faye had ignored in all five messages he had left in her voicemail. She thought of seeing Spike's face through the long lens, so clear and close, and then pulling the trigger. She sat in the leather black couch, took her pink wig off along with her long bead necklaces that had started to choke her. She set them down next to the rifle, her knuckles slightly grazing against the metal barrel.

And she realized she didn't want to kill him. She wanted to touch him, perhaps make love to him so he could be real to her, so she could feel every single cell of his being and know it wasn't a delusion. Then with the vivid image of their naked bodies against each other in her mind, she began crying. They were silent heavy tears that barreled down her cheeks and dripped down her chin.

She glared at the rifle and extended out her hand to reach for it, her face still wet and her nose runny, but she stopped before she grabbed it and instead swept the necklaces and the wig to the ground with a powerful slap. The weapon stirred and pointed to a forty-five degree angle to the corner of the wall, but she left it alone.

She sank back into the couch, waiting to calm her tears to then return Johann's calls. She needed to talk to Spike Spiegel and know what happened seven months ago, when Julia died and Vicious disappeared.

---

Spike drank his beer in thoughtful slow sips, rubbing his eyebrows and examining the picture propped up against the red clay flowerpot full of leaves and no flowers—an idea of Maggie's—sitting on his dining table. There was a definite resemblance between the prostitute with the pink hair and this girl with dark hair that glistened violet because of the weathered tint of the old photo. This girl knew Julia, and someone had known that and sent him a picture nearly a year ago perhaps simply to tease him.

_Find her_, insisted the cursive thin letters and he had found her, he thought, but he didn't know what it meant. He had lost her again, he supposed, and he had lost Julia with her. He looked at the little girl with contempt. Late the night before he had yelled at the photo, thrown curses at it and resisted the urge to crumple it. A part of him, deep in his mind, to the left and some few dendrites down where the imagination was most active, thought that this woman had the power to bring Julia back to life, as if the words she uttered the night before were an incantation that had started the process.

God was a child stacking dominoes, thought Spike. Those dominoes were things like Oracle, that woman, this picture and his malfunctioning mechanical eye that suddenly clasped onto each other and became a hard metal chain nailed to the past.

First, he drew an invisible line with his index finger down the glossy finish of his wooden dining table, first, he would have this picture analyzed and find out where it came from. Second, he drew a second line, he would ask around for this girl in that bar and anywhere near it. Third, this line was only half as long as the others, he would look into Oracle with some of his sources. If Vicious had come back from the dead and brought Oracle with him, then Spike needed to stop him.

Throw all the ingredients in the cauldron, stir and boil, and out of the foam Julia will be born again.

---

She had tried visiting Spike to make sure he apologized for his whole scene two days ago, but yesterday he had been gone nearly all day and all night. In the afternoon after she came home from school, she had counted the hours. The first three made her the angriest, the two after that annoyed, and after four more hours, she grew resigned. She stopped counting at midnight, cursed him at the foot of her bed and went to sleep. When she woke up, she had remembered five dreams, but it was the fourth one that was the most vivid in her mind. It had been more than a mixed memory recall than a dream, which would seem to make it more significant than the other nonsensical images.

She was a pre-med and had taken various neurological sections in her biology and anatomy classes that explained how dreams worked, but she still kept an old dream dictionary from her high school years with a blue cover and frayed like an accordion at the edges. On the front sat the dark caricature of a woman dressed in a Grecian robe, her feet dangling from the curve of a crescent white moon and her head pressed up against the side. She slept or thought with her hand as a pillow and a peaceful line-drawn smile on her shadow face.

Maggie opened up her book, wondering whether a memory-dream counted with the same amount of significance and Jungian symbolism as an ordinary one, but she supposed that at least the dream elements of it would have to count for something. She started with those. She looked up white first, and in its century bold font it told her that the color white meant several things, none of which she saw applicable but two: being aware of your surroundings and the start of a new stage of life, to re-awaken. She looked up the second word, balloon, and it was a bad thing or a good thing. It either meant your inner child and celebrating that, or it meant depression. Neither one made sense.

She re-traced the dream fragments and pieced them back together into a small movie in her head. She pressed play.

Spike meandered through a room filled with white balloons with a bottle of Vodka in one hand, his feet kicking them up with each step. She tried to follow him around at first, but it made her dizzy, so she moved some of the balloons aside and sat on the wooden floor.

Sit down, she told him, but he didn't listen and kept wandering around mumbling something incoherently.

I know what it was, he said and stopped suddenly turning to her. I saw you in my eye, you see, and you said come get me and pointed to the building where he was keeping you and I found my bounty. It was in a dream and then the next morning, there he was, his face on the T.V. show, you know with the blonde and the black cowboy, and your picture next to him. Spike laughed and then added, I thought I was crazy.

That was it. That was most of the dream that she could replay in her mind, but it was vivid enough to startle her. She closed the book with a scowl, knowing that it was just a senseless dream and that it meant nothing.

"It was stupid to even think so," she mumbled and put the book back under her bed where she always kept it.

As she served herself a bowl of cereal, she heard the door of the apartment below her shut in a rather forceful way. He had gone out again and who knew how long it would be until he came back. She was determined not to care or even worry about it anymore. If he didn't apologize, then he didn't and she could live without it.

Fifteen minutes later, she finally decided to leave her house to run some errands, because she needed some groceries (the list on the pink memo paper in her left jean pocket read: apples, milk, t. paper, school stuff, femme stuff, eggs and whole wheat b.) and unlike yesterday, she wasn't going sit and wait around for him.

As she exited her apartment, she saw a woman entering the building, the kind of woman Maggie only notices because of the superior air about her, as if nothing in the world could ever stop her. She thought herself one of those women and liked to see others like her. The woman was remarkably beautiful with her long legs, perfectly proportionate facial features and fair skin seemingly undisturbed by the ferocious summer heat of Mars.

Maggie saw her as she climbed the stairs, strutting in that regal way that all women who know they are beautiful walk in. She stopped on the second floor and headed down the open hall of the building. Maggie walked down the first set of stairs and stopped on the second landing, which smelled faintly of cigarette smoke. She peeked around the corner to see at which door the woman would stop, and to her surprise, she stood in front of Spike's apartment.

The woman stared at the door for moment, studied it and the window next to it. She made no movement to knock on it, but simply leaned against the railing, the cigarette dangling from her middle and index finger. Her short cropped hair covered most of her face, so Maggie couldn't note any of her expressions to at least come up with some kind of clue as to why a woman like that would ever have anything to do with Spike, a man who never apologized, and no girl ever liked that.

But then it was no surprise that some women—beautiful never meant respectable after all—would like a man like Spike. He had that dangerous broken air about him. It was someone to nurture and tend for, and perhaps in the process, he could be fixed up. 'Love could heal' would be the cliché.

But then she could be an ex-girlfriend in town, who'd heard of him, searched for him, maybe from a long time ago, maybe having come to tell him she still loved him and despite everything would take him back. Maybe she was the one that left him broken. That kind of mournful scowl he wore on his face had to be because of a lost love, especially because he seemed to hate all women—though he vehemently denied it when accused—and in the last few months, she had seen no evidence of contact with the opposite sex. It certainly explained his heavy drinking and horrible moods.

The woman raised her cigarette to her lips and stopped momentarily, inching her head forward, as if the door were speaking to her. Her demeanor relaxed again, and she took a long drag from her cigarette and finally knocked on the door, two quick pounds. Maggie smirked as the woman metamorphosed in her mind into an opportunity to find out more about Spike's dirty past. She would find a way to use it against him and pay him back for his asshole attitude as of late.

"He's not home. I heard him leave a little bit ago," Maggie said after the woman knocked a second time. Her light green eyes studied Maggie's face for two cigarette drags.

"You know him?" The woman said pointing to the door, B-7 embossed in gold and nailed to it. Maggie nodded, feeling her cheeks already flushing from the ungodly heat and sweat creeping down her neck from underneath her bun.

"Spike, right?" Maggie asked, and the woman confirmed with nod and a cautious glare. "I live in the apartment above," said Maggie, quickly catching onto the woman's suspicious glare. She was really beautiful in that simplistic sense, meaning she had nothing too exotic or special about her. She looked like a perfect mix between an Asian mother and an Anglo father. She had the soft oval face that Maggie always desired when she looked in the mirror and saw her square jaw and wide nose. Even her voice was low and sultry like a Jazz singer's.

"Right." She put the cigarette out and glanced toward the street, pulling some her glossy hair behind her ear. "Do you know when he'll be home?" Maggie shrugged and shook her head. If it was anything like yesterday, the man who never apologized might not even show his face for hours. Maggie touched the doorknob, remembering one of his usual habits: if he left for less than twenty minutes then the door would be unlocked. The woman's eyes widened when the door popped open.

"Does he always leave it like that?" she said, turning to the door.

"No, but it means he'll be back soon." Maggie had one-upped her in a way, and she felt a small hint of pride because of it. "Would you like to come in?" The woman raised her eyebrow and smirked.

"Do you always invite strangers into other people's homes?" she asked as she walked inside. She carefully wandered around for a moment, observing the white walls and old furniture set in a square pattern in the living room—sofa facing wall, old black coffee table in front and an old red Tudor chair against the white space under the window.

"Nope, just his. He's been a bastard to me anyway, so if you need anything for voodoo, or would like to burn some of his meager things, be my guest," Maggie answered with a wave of the hand, dismissing his future scowl of disapproval. Faye gave a slight chuckle.

"Well, he certainly hasn't changed." She smiled and pulled out a pack of menthols from her black pants' pocket. She wore a tight white shirt with a black blazer on top of it.

"I'm Maggie by the way," she said, hoping that it would incite a formal introduction. The woman stared at her for while, her chin tilted upwards and her eyes narrowed.

"I'm Faye," she said in a curt manner and lit her cigarette with a small pocket lighter. She extended out the pack and offered Maggie one, but she refused recalling that the first time she had smoked a cigarette at thirteen—seven years ago—she had coughed so hard she had thrown up all over the guy with the blonde hair and that sweet smile that she imagined herself losing her virginity to. She saw cigarettes as a curse since then.

Faye moved to the sliding doors on the opposite side and moved the long stiff blinds to look out. "You seem to know him pretty well," she said and let them go. They rocked back and forth to the rhythm of the kitchen wall clock, until they fell out of beat and grew still.

"Nah, just some habits you get to know from being neighbors." Maggie wanted to be the one asking all the questions, but Faye had a secretive gleam in her eyes that made it all the more difficult to know whether she would answer truthfully if Maggie asked her anything.

Faye sat down at the table and used the pot as an ashtray. Faye motioned with her head for Maggie to approach.

"So how long has he been living here?" She started with that question and the moved on to others that helped Maggie relax into the conversation like: "Does he still bounty hunt? Have you met Jet?" And others like it. It reassured Maggie that this a woman who knew this much had to at least have slept with him, if not dated him, and that whatever juicy secrets she would find out would be worth every minute of his angry roll of insults.

It would be five days later, when she would see Faye once again, not lively and talking to her, but drenched in blood on Spike's couch.

---

As Spike sauntered down the sidewalk, past the pre-school and the two girls with matching ribbons on their pigtails running by him, he thought about her. He couldn't help the smell of her scent that now clung to his skin, forming new cells and multiplying, creating layers methodically, the whole process powered by the heat of the sun, and constructing a thin cool mist of Julia around him. The prospect of her resurrection brought back some of the sweeter memories that his mind had tapered and confined to only one small little section, because he was too riddled with anger and grief to allow anything but her numb face of betrayal to linger. But this new expectation allowed the taste of her kisses to billow in his mouth again, crashing against the tongue and ebbing back into the throat. Her whispers and her moans flooded his mind along with the soft sensation of her body pressed against his and the strands of blonde caressing his arms as his hands fingered down her back. In those deep intimate moments, he couldn't see her. She was a shadow in front of him and their love hidden by the late hour of the night so that after a while they couldn't tell what it was anymore.

He could only see her when they were apart or when she was with Vicious, his suspicions glinting in his yellow eyes and his silver hair whitening the night like the moon. Those times when they could see each other, the world surrounded them and suffocated their love. When he saw her with Vicious, he thought he was dying and seeing her die in front of him. It made her skin filthy, her eyes deceitful and her smile nauseating. Sometimes he preferred that they didn't see each other when he touched her.

Spike wiped his brow, ridding himself of the sweat and the memory of her love from his mind. In his thoughts he had forgotten that he actually had a destination. After the continuous search of someone who may know something about the prostitute, he had come up with nothing. No one had seen her before. No one knew who the hell she was. So he had resigned all his hopes on the picture of the little girl. She would tell him a clue to find out who was that woman who knew Julia.

He walked into an alley and knocked on the back rotted door of small brick building. A young man, with short brown hair and five small hoop earrings on his left ear, smirked as soon as he saw Spike and let him inside. He entered the "white room" as it was dubbed, with bare walls and white machines taller than him that whirred and clicked loudly. They manufactured still frames of crooks, cheaters as well as confidential documents. That was Walt's calling. He was the photographer private eye that anonymous clients went to whenever they needed information.

"So I sent the picture to the guy I know in downtown for analysis, because I got nothin' that could have deciphered this baby," he said eagerly as he reached for an envelope on his make-shift desk that consisted of a foldout chair and a portable plastic table.

"So, do you know the year at least?" Spike asked, not sharing Walt's candidness toward the picture.

"You've got a goddamn treasure, I tell you," he pulled out the picture from the manila envelope along with a paper. The small photo was wrapped in some kind of transparent protective plastic. "You won't believe this, but you've got yourself a pre-Luna photo."

Spike stared at him slightly annoyed at the photo jargon or whatever the hell he was saying.

"Meaning?" Spike muttered, and Walt gave him a wide grin. He held out the picture to Spike as if he hadn't seen it before.

"Pre-Luna destruction, man, pre-Gate Incident. This picture is from the turn of the century—2006 to be exact."

While the right side of the brain made a weak attempt at doing the math, the left side started imagining an explanation for this. The first conclusion, agreed on by both sides, was that the girl in the picture may have looked like the woman that knew Julia, but it could not be her. The right side finally came up with an estimate of about eighty-years-old. Someone had asked him to search for an old biddy that probably died in the Gate Incident anyway.

"You don't get it, do ya?" Walt looked at the picture again, clicked his tongue and shook his head with disappointment at Spike. "This is a relic, a flash to the past. It's amazing."

"Well, that kind of ruins it for me." Spike scowled and grabbed the picture from his hand. He placed it in his pant's pocket and turned around to leave.

"Wait! Where did you get it?" Walt said suddenly.

"Someone sent it to me. I don't know who the hell it is."

"Well, the ink is current. Whoever wrote that on there, wrote it not too long ago." Spike shrugged and waved dismissively, exiting the small lab. "Don't lose it!" Walt shouted as the door shut.

"Fucking hell," is how Spike felt. He muttered another curse under his breath, becoming fully aware that the only clue he had on the wench from the bar had withered to nothing, and just when he thought the puzzle pieces were starting to fall together.

He had hoped the person behind the ink was Julia. On the way to the lab, he had imagined her thin delicate hand holding the pen, writing out the words. _Find her, _she stopped, _and find me, _she would have said if it was necessary, but Spike would get it once he put it all the clues together. It was of no use now, and the left side of the brain had tossed out the entire fantasy, the right side scolding it with some lesson on logic and deduction.

As he headed home, he walked with an uncharacteristic, yet very slight limp of his right leg, which endured the weight and constant prickling of the picture in its pristine plastic film. He wanted to toss it aside, and he thought about this many times, imagining the instances in which he would toss it—at one point it would fly under the wheel of a passing car and be torn to shreds, or later, as he crossed the street, it would slide into the sewer opening never to be seen again—but he finally arrived to his apartment with the little Pre-Luna treasure poking at his thigh still. But this tiny sensation was soon forgotten for the more pressing noise coming from the other side of his door. It was giggles—Maggie's nasally laugh and someone's pretentious chuckles. Lock the door from now on, said his right side of the brain, and he took note of it. He turned the knob slowly to catch them with their heads tilted back and their mouths wide open as if it was the most compelling evidence to the crime they had committed.

The first thing he did was scan the place to make sure they hadn't done anything strange to it, like put up paintings and floral vases here and there. The next thing he focused on were the two figures sitting at his table, staring straight at him with curious eyes. Maggie had a proud smirk on her face as she caught his gaze and then she turned her attention right back to the other woman. Look at who it is, Maggie said with her eyes. At first, he didn't recognize her at all with her dark bob of hair, but as soon as his mind tinted it pink and compared her to his delusional vision of two days ago, it became apparent to him. His hand automatically reached for the gun in the holster hidden in his jacket, and concealed the weapon as he walked straight up to her. Then he aimed tip of the barrel only a few inches from her forehead, and she made no movement to duck or reach for a gun of her own.

"Jesus Christ, what the hell is wrong with you?" Maggie shouted, shooting up from her chair and away from him.

"Get the hell out of here, Maggie," he said in a vile hoarse tone. The woman stared at him with a silent undemonstrative gaze. Her eyes wandered to Maggie.

"Go," she said to the girl. "It'll be fine. I'm just here to explain I really didn't mean to cheat on him." She smirked, and Maggie lingered for a few more seconds.

"This is fucking crazy," she muttered, adjusted her shirt indignantly and left.

"That was subtle of you," the woman said.

"Who the fuck are you?" he hissed. Her eyes wandered back to him. Her stoic facial expression hadn't shifted even a little to any kind of emotion. She leaned back on the chair and smirked.

"Well, if you really must know, I'm a Romani. I'm sure you've never heard of the term, but we wander around like nomads, seeking—" She stopped the moment the tip of the barrel touched her forehead.

"How do you know Julia?" His whole insides were shaking. He wanted to split her open and search through her himself.

"That's the real question you want to ask," she said as her brow tensed to a somber expression. "But I don't talk with guns to my head. It's kind of rude, don't you think?" She pulled out a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her black blazer. He took a deep breath and lowered the gun. He waited until he lit her cigarette. When the first puff of smoke billowed out her mouth, he realized he wanted to choke her, but he needed Julia first.

"Sit down," she said pointing to the chair that Maggie had occupied moments ago. He did as he was told, driven by her cold temperate look. "I'll tell you how I know her, if you tell me how you and Vicious killed her." Her chin was stiff as she spoke.

"How she died," he corrected her. "It was her choice."

"It's all in perspective." She licked her lips after another puff of smoke. She was beautiful, and she was so ugly at the same time. The glistening of her saliva on her lips disgusted him, and for some reason, which the right side of the brain failed to explain and the left side failed to conjure up, she reminded him of Julia.

Hours later he learned her name: Faye, the woman with the incantation that had brought Julia back from her death.


	5. Chapter 3: The Enigma of the Hour

I'm not dead, just deadly busy. This story will continue. It's hard and agonizing to write (you should see the outline, it's a bloody nightmare), but I don't leave things unfinished. I will get better, just give me time to step out crazy poetry mode and into prose (you'll see the crazy repetition, alliteration and so on in this chapter that will tell you I have been doing mostly poetry in the last few months). If you're reading this still, thank you. I appreciate it whole-heartedly.

-B

**Heroes Don't Exist**

Chapter 3: _The Enigma of the Hour_

In that one minute, the Muslim man was shot straight between his eyes, and the girl with the veil stooped next to him as she gagged out a sob. She pulled off the black cloth from her head, revealing her dark cropped hair, and pressed the veil on his face. He must have whispered something, because she shook her head and her lips rounded out to form a few words, but by then Oracle had to aim the rifle at another man in the amassing crowd. He was the one crouched with his hands over his head and with his eyes wide in abject horror. Oracle pulled the trigger, but the positioning was off. The lone shot had been on target, but at the cost of a nearly dislocated shoulder.

At 11:38 the minute was over, and her thoughts returned to her. She was Julia again. She knew she had been set up. She knew she had been a distraction so whoever else was out there on a rooftop could kill that Muslim man. There was only one thing she could do, and that was to go after the veiled girl.

---

It was at 10:29 that night, when she became Oracle. It was at the same time when the door leading to the roof opened, and she set down her black bag, leaned over the concrete ledge and looked down on Alba from her urban mountaintop. Five minutes she spent watching the cars that zoomed down the streets, and also the doors of the club, an ordinary brick ten stories below and across from her, burst open every minute or so and promptly shut close after a few faceless people with glittering club costumes and kitschy high heels huddled inside.

Tonight, at 10:29 and until she finished the job, she had to be Oracle. And Oracle was quite different from Julia, because even Julia herself didn't fully know what the name even meant. Perhaps Oracle was the black cap she used to hide her long blonde hair, or the weight of the bag she carried with her to the job site, or even the stance she took when she held the sniper rifle—sometimes a simple handgun—and shot the target.

But even so, in her mind, Julia couldn't separate her father from the word. Oracle equaled her lineage, her inheritance and her blood. The name had been borne this century, out of the type of horror that people must usually explain as some magical event, because everyone reasons that a human being cannot hold so much power and be so hideous as to create such precise destruction. For twenty-five weeks straight in the summer of 2039, from the small suburban town of Salome all the way to the very heart of Venus' Metropolis, a body would appear on a sidewalk, in a home, in a restaurant, with one gunshot wound to the head. It was a precise angle: from the bottom of the neck, piercing the cerebellum, up to either the middle or the front of the brain.

And the media, which has always had a hunger for destruction, heard the rumor started by probably an old man or perhaps a simple horrific joke, and the rumor turned into truth. It was said that the reason why the assassin had the accuracy of an angel of death was because he consulted an Oracle. A small underground newspaper claimed that an old Indian witch, who had survived the Gate Incident, was the one who would tell him exactly where the next hit would be.

And Oracle became not a myth, not a story to scare young people wandering at night through the clubs, or politicians who made too many enemies. It became a powerful, ghastly plausibility.

Julia had never asked whether her father had appropriated the name, or whether he had actually committed those murders. She wouldn't have found either answer surprising, so she supposed that's why she hadn't bothered. The less she knew about her father, the better their relationship. When she became his heir, 4:15 on a Monday before the sun rose over nine years ago, she began to hate him. The hate increased in her still, every time she had to pull the trigger. It had evolved into several different emotions directed at all kinds of people, but it was definitely still hate for her father.

Forgetting the old resentment, she pulled out the black plastic case that held the puzzle of her rifle neatly tucked in its gray padding. She started with the handle and moved up the to the tip. Her movements were so rehearsed that she put the weapon together in a trance.

She set the rifle down, barrel pointed to the black sky, and its body leaned up against the cement ledge. She followed the cold breeze and stared down the street, past the rising offices and apartment towers to where the city suddenly shifted into another world: Moroccan Street. The labyrinth outline of the stone structure of the medina was easily visible in its orange Mediterranean glow. She closed her eyes. She thought she could hear distant drums pulsing from the stone alleys. It sounded like a heartbeat, which reminded her of the rifle, so she set it horizontally on the ledge, pointed it at the club door and looked through its telescopic lens. She could make out the brown patchy outlines of rust around its edges, and the yellowing on the chrome on the small slot window.

Her target was in there, laughing with his wide Euro-Alba mouth and his alcoholic pot belly bouncing up and down as he grazed the leg of some young stupid girl. She hadn't been Julia the night before either, or Oracle, she had been his 'young stupid girl' of the night. She had played it well. The blonde hair always made her look naïve, yet coy, especially when she curled it.

She was full of memories tonight. It was only reasonable she would think of them. She was in Alba after having avoided the city, and most of the planet, for nearly a year. She was in Red Dragon territory. But she had nothing to worry about, because Vicious was stuck on some war in Titan. Would he die? She found herself somberly asking, and no 'I hope so' followed, which worried her. But then, she had never been one of those people completely in touch or aware of her feelings. They did what they wanted. They loved whom they wanted.

She found herself looking north toward the empty city of Tharsis with its long shadowy buildings and desiccated concrete homes. It was there when nearly nine years ago, she sealed her fate to that of Vicious. Her life weaved into his with some rusted old needle that stained the fabric as it knit. She could remember the day exactly, but not the hour, not the moment her pale blue eyes met with his bile yellow ones, and it's not that they fell in love then, but they had set themselves together on that doomed path that would lead them to need and to hunger for each other.

That fateful day was coincidentally the one after she learned of her father's assassination, a suspected crime of the White Tigers. Who could kill the powerful Oracle? Who could kill death itself? No one knew, and the Van just clamped the issue shut. Then Mao and Rick—and Annie too, she supposed, because Rick never did anything without his wife's approval—turned what had once been simple rivalry with the White Tigers into a full out war. It eventually led to Rick's death too.

So Julia inherited her father's role and knew that she had to lead her mother and her sister to safety. They had to leave the city with its opposing towers, on the east the White Tigers, to the west the Apostolic See, to the south the Red Dragons, and to the north the Black Raj. Julia arrived too late. At three in the morning, she traveled in a hurry back to Olympus, to her family, and found the house in mid-chaos, murderers ransacking the rooms, the furniture, and her mother and sister's bodies. They were already dead when she got there, and in a trance and with her father's old sword in hand, she took it out of its hilt, remembering the many years of lessons, and like a cloaked black witch, a shadow, she sliced through the flesh of the faceless men.

She had nowhere else to go. With empty hands, leaving the empty bodies of her family behind, she blew up the remnants of her life by simply leaving the gas stove on and then dropping a small hand grenade she had ransacked, out of revenge, from a faceless man. She got into her rented car and drove one hundred miles to Tharsis, to knock at dawn on the door of man she barely knew. He was the most intimate acquaintance she had at that moment. She could have knocked on Annie's door, but it would have been too much for her and then Julia would have had to handle everyone else's sorrow along with her own.

Vicious opened the door, his brow tensing slightly, but his eyes fixed and emotionless. Her hair, her skin, her clothes were stiff and stuck with the blood of both murderers and kin alike, all brownish, all dried and flaking on her body.

Come in, he said to her, and the sound of his voice revived her from a deafness she didn't know she had acquired during the night. She could hear her hoarse uneven breathing and feel the choking weight on her chest.

They killed them all, she said, looking down and noticing his white carpet. He would have to wash it, she thought.

Are you all right? His voice had all the emotion missing from his eyes. He sounded, for the first time ever, compassionate, but years later, when she looked back on the moment, she realized it was mostly a dejected pity. Still, there was heat from his voice, or perhaps, a magnetic force that sought out her body and made her wish she was closer to him.

I need to shower, she said, the clean carpet menaced with a tremble below her. He said nothing, but with one hand, he beckoned her to follow him. They stopped momentarily in the middle of his hallway, when he reached in a door and pulled out a white towel from inside a small linen closet. He pointed to the door next to his bedroom and handed her the towel. When she took it, she placed one hand on top of his, not sure if she did this intentionally, but they stood there staring at each other for a few minutes. Neither said anything. She didn't think at all as she searched his cold gaze, but instead, she focused on his crumpled brow and when she saw it tense further, she let go and walked into the bathroom.

Once she was done with the shower and her tears mingled with the water and evaporized with the steam, she exited, rummaged his closet for a shirt and found some boxers. The first question she asked him when she found him smoking and drinking coffee in the kitchen was, Where's your laundry room? He pointed to a door behind him and she dumped all her clothes in the wash. When she reemerged into the kitchen, she found another cup of coffee next to his. She sat down on the stool on the opposite side of the breakfast counter.

I think I have to go, Julia said, glaring into the black-brownness of her coffee. She liked it with cream, but dismissed the whole idea of ingesting anything. She was too nauseous.

What will you do? he asked, his yellow eyes narrowing and the sides of his mouth curving down a bit.

I'm gonna go find myself, of course, she said, and then gave a breathy, silent laugh.

Will you be back? He didn't ask it yearningly, but just to keep the conversation moving.

If you wait for me. She wanted to cry then, wandering why she'd come to his house, when she'd only been there once before for a job she did with him, because she was the only young enough woman that could do it, and her father had complied. The thought of her dead family assaulted her for a moment, and she remembered her dead father, and the sword she had left behind with everything else in the house. Though she had felt compelled to go back for it, she would not. She would leave Mars and its forests of skyscrapers behind.

Come back, he said to her as his cold eyes settled on her face. That was when she remembered why she had come to his house. She had forgotten in her shock about that night she worked with him. It was the same night their limbs searched for each other in the dark and she didn't know who was fucking, but that she needed the heat, because it had been a cold winter last year.

---

The last time Julia gazed at her watch was a little before eleven-thirty, and then came the woman with the veil, then came out her target, and then shots were everywhere. It happened too fast, so fast that time had to slow down to let the events happen one by one. Julia had seen the Arab man walking with the veiled girl next to him, a hurried suspicious gait, the two like figures so black that they even stood out against the blueish darkness of the night. When time slowed, it allowed Julia to see the calm glare on his face before the bullet that came out of nowhere turned it all to blood. His head spattered on the veiled woman and on the sidewalk, and she stood there immobilized, fell to her knees, not looking once at his body, and then sprang up again and ran. Julia had to hurriedly adjust her position, find her aim, and shoot. Her target was dead, and the veiled girl had escaped.

"And that's it? How the hell did you find her?" Ella murmured as she helped Julia pull up the unconscious body of the veiled woman on the bed. Ella had pulled off must of the woman's clothes that still had bits of flesh stuck like grass burrs on the cotton.

"I didn't find her. We kind of ran into each other. She nearly killed me," Julia said, and then sighed.

"Well, that's fucking brilliant, Jay. Bring in the girl who nearly killed you and who's being chased, by—who did she say again—oh yes, the military." Ella ran her fingers through her ragged hair, and a victim of dozens of dye jobs, the last of which had produced a mixture of blonde, blue, and red streaks. "Why did you bring her on the ship again? You better thank your starts that Old Keeper is blind and trusts me a shitload. He was just happy to hear that you were willing to pay fifteen extra for such a short notice and for the companion you got here. We needed the money, and he likes you, so it was no questions asked."

"She knows my name," Julia said suddenly. Ella's mouth fell open slightly and revealed a small silver ball glistening on her tongue.

"Do you know her?" Her voice had nearly fallen to a murmur.

"No, I've never seen her in my life."

"But she called you—"

"Julia. She said, 'I'm dreaming. You're dead, and I'm dreaming.'" Julia's black cap had gotten caught on the metal corner of a trash bin they had hidden behind. The woman screamed and called her by her name. She screamed, and all Julia could do was punch her and then hit her on the back of her with her handgun. She had been unconscious since.

"How do you think she knows you? Vicious?" Ella hissed his name, unable to whisper it, and unable to keep the thought to herself.

"I don't know. Just take me to Ganymede. I'll question her at my place."

---

Light—pulsing—the hour, what hour was it? What day was it? What year? 2070. Rashid is dead. Rashid is dead.

"Eat," she said. Faye pulled back from the ghostly female voice. She would not come out from underneath her covers. She heard the clatter of the metal tray next to the bed and then a few steps back. "Faye, you need to eat."

"Where am I?" Faye asked. Her body trembled and her eyes squinted from the light pushing in through the white covers.

"You asked yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that and—you've been here five days, Faye. You're on Ganymede."

Faye started crying, not from sadness, or anger, or anything else. It was from the confusion. Her body didn't know what to do.

"You don't understand. It's a dream," Faye said.

"No, it isn't. I need you to come out from under the covers. I need you to answer my questions. I have a new question, a very important one." Her voice was coaxing, but it had a low hiss from beneath each word. Faye would have come out of the covers, but she hated that face. She hated those blue eyes and that blonde hair. She didn't want to see it again.

"Faye," Julia paused, and then took a deep breath. "This is not a dream. Your friend is really dead. You're just in shock. If this were a dream, then you wouldn't feel every agonizing minute of it. Do you know what dreams—nightmares—are like? They jump around. You can never follow them. You can never feel like this. This is not a dream."

Faye wasn't stupid. She had thought of that. Deep inside, she knew she wasn't dreaming, but the prospect that she knew this woman before she had ever met her was much more disconcerting than her being insane. Faye didn't believe in God. She didn't believe in fate, or the supernatural. So what did this make her? Whose joke could this be without a God, without fate?

Faye Morgan could not endure this. Faye Morgan would perish in her insanity, but Faye Valentine could survive this. So with all the strength left in her, she summoned Valentine. She called for her from the depths of her dreams, from underneath the months of therapy and torture.

Faye Valentine pulled off the covers slowly. Her own dirty smell hit her. It was the scent of old blood, sweat, and spit all over her. She held her nausea back, and moved her light green eyes toward Julia.

"Faye?" Julia's blue eyes questioned her new demeanor. It was obvious she had never met Faye Valentine. Julia pulled the chair, sitting by the door, closer to the bed and sat down. She was wearing all black, and her blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail.

"I want you to answer this honestly. You have to understand that I need to know why you know my name, and I can't let you go until I do. But I need you to answer this first." There was a pause, and Julia looked off to the side as if grasping for the right way to phrase her question. "I sent a DNA sample to be checked. They tell me that it must be a really old sample, because the closest match to it, closest relative you have, died forty years ago. Your file, on the other hand, is top secret. But the thing is, how is it possible, Faye, that you've had no living close relations in the last forty years?"

Faye took it all in. It meant she had no family. It meant everybody was dead. She would have to find herself on her own. Her memories would have to come back on their own. She remembered the time she had sat down with the dog, and told it her story. Those were her replacement memories. Those were all she had.

"I was cryogenically frozen for over fifty years…"

The numbness had already set in.

---

Chapter title: Giorgio de Chirico, _The Enigma of the Hour_, 1912


	6. Chapter 4: For the Woman's House

**Heroes Don't Exist**

**Chapter Four: _For the Woman's House_**

_This is how you make minestrone soup._

The first thought that came to her mind when she woke up that morning is that her face felt naked, and that it would be naked always now that Rashid was gone. She had become so easily attached to the veil and the smells of the spiced lentils and the gentle taste of the mint tea and the occasional multi-colored dupattas and dark abayas dappling the alleys of the medina. It had only been less than year of that life, and her French was still much better than her Arabic, and she was totally ignorant of the Urdu and other dialects prominent in the area, but still, it had felt genuine—the life so easily adopted. She now realized she had loved it for its exoticness and that had ruined it, because nothing exotic was plausible or real or palpable. Exotic was an imagined state. It degraded the real and turned it into a poisonous mirage that led her to become so easily enamored with her disguise.

It was only a mask after all, and beneath it there was only the shadow of a human being.

Faye didn't know what to do now, or who to become. She remained sticky with sweat in her bed, only wandering across the hall to the bathroom once or twice a day, and pausing for a few seconds in the hall if she heard noises, but then quickly retreating behind—what she had appropriated as—her door. Julia would knock once in the morning, and Faye would wait until the steps receded and when she opened the door, she'd find a new liter of bottled water and her food. Julia hadn't complained or even spoken since Faye had told her everything. Since she had spilled words and phrases like dreams and premonitions, and military commands, psychological conditions, escape, fear, and waking from a cold sleep. She thought she remembered something from her old life then, something about a sci-fi movie she had seen and hated, the theatre perhaps jokingly called The Tivoli. But it was all made up, and she couldn't successfully keep the comforting lie alive.

Unable to be no one anymore, and needing to become clean again, to scrub Rashid's blood, which had become invisible but still clung to her skin with such a heaviness that for nearly a week it made it impossible to lift herself up, she rose from her bed on the night of the third day after having last spoken to Julia, and finally asked for a towel.

"What?" Julia's blue eyes had widened slightly, as if not recognizing her at first. Faye stepped deeper into the kitchen, but was afraid to come too close. There was only one hall in the whole place, and that was the one that led to all the rooms. The rest of the area was open: kitchen, living room, dining room and small gym set all sharing the same giant space. The lights above them hung from metal railings that gave the place the air of an old studio with the cameras hiding behind the brightness of the precise placement of the lights.

"Where do you keep your towels?" She repeated her question. Faye had risked coming to Julia and breaking the silence knowing well that Julia's response might be to throw her out once and for all.

"The armoire in your room. It has towels and clothes, if you wish to use them." Julia examined Faye's face closely as she said this, looking for something and not quite finding it. Faye muttered her thanks, and started back for her room. She had wanted to pause for a moment, and bring to the front of her mind that question that had been lingering among her thoughts for the last few days. Could she stay? Would Julia let her?

"Faye," Julia called to her before she left the great room area.

"Yes?" It would come. Her heart was beating, and the words were coming. She was too afraid to turn around and watch Julia's face as she told her to get out. She had nowhere else to go, no identity to survive with. She just needed time. Would she have to beg? Could Faye beg?

"I'm going to the market center in an hour or two. You should come. The sun and air will do you good."

Faye had turned around immediately to catch Julia's face and try and decipher her puzzling intentions, but Faye only caught a glimpse of her long blonde hair trailing free behind her back. "Okay," she said, and left to shower and get dressed.

She was thinner than Julia, so the jeans she found were a bit loose, and Julia was also taller, so Faye had to fold up the seams of the pant legs. The lined, violet tee fit her just fine, and shoes were only a matter of flip-flops she found by the side of the armoire. She hadn't noticed any of those things in her room. She wondered if they had been there the whole time, or if Julia had summoned them with her words, and they had suddenly materialized. But it didn't matter. Julia seemed keen on still letting her stay, and Faye would do nothing to subvert that.

When they left, Faye mentioned nothing about their location. They simply walked away from the rest of the barren warehouses that surrounded Julia's place, and found that it was bigger than it looked from inside. But that had been better left for another time. There was too much to find out from Julia, too much to understand.

Ganymede's sky looked foreign, though sweetly garlanded with soft cumulus clouds spread on the perfect, solid hue of blue with the careful eye of an artist. It was a clean backdrop for the grays and browns of the city buildings, and the glow endowed with them with a pristine appearance. The whole city had been designed with the sky in mind, or perhaps the other way around. Everything was artificial. Every patch of green, every hint of the yellow sun, and even its heat pulsating on her face had been calculated to precision by people she had never met. The world had been constructed from every detail. She was the only one that lived outside its boundaries and its perfect cycles.

That's why the market center surprised her. Suddenly, the world had lost all its unreality and transformed into chaos like in the old medina. It was the most wonderful sight she had seen in a while. The shouts, the stands, the canvas roofs, the smells of fresh animals and of the dirt still clinging to the farm plants, and the people pushing against each other—those were all real touches, real smells, real colors and sounds. She felt immediately sentimental, and noticed that Julia had stopped along with her, staring at Faye with narrowed eyes and a slight thin-lipped smile, her blue eyes full of thoughts, but what kind, Faye didn't know.

"I'm making minestrone today," Julia said in low, almost coaxing tone. She looked pretty in her ponytail and her white blouse with puffed short sleeves, and that skirt that reminded Faye of a dream, but she didn't quite know which one. "I need some ingredients." Julia pulled out a scribbled list from her handbag and handed it to Faye. "You can take care of the dry goods." Julia didn't move, her stare changing to a suspicious gleam, wondering whether Faye understood the simple command.

"I'm fine," Faye said somberly. Julia's eyes rounded to a softer expression.

"I know," she answered and turned toward the fresh vegetables.

Faye bit her nail, and then slipped her hand into her pocket, fingering the money card Julia had given her before leaving. It was Rashid's. She asked if Faye had enough money in it, and the answer was yes. She thought of Rashid's 500,000 thousand woolongs. She thought of how he had known all along that he was going to die. Part of her hated him for it.

After nearly an hour of wandering through the tumultuous alleys of the market, and after a few purchases of clothes, kidney beans, dried herbs, and crackers, she headed back to the entrance, the small, bricked spot where they were to meet up again. But she couldn't stay waiting for too long. The sun's heat on her face filled her with more energy despite her starving stomach, and as soon as she caught sight of the stands full of paintings, she headed over there with an eager child's gait. There were the usual still-lifes of flowers, fruits and gardens with ponds, and also various portraits of androgynous child faces, but it was the booth with an old dark-skinned woman that caught her attention. Her paintings were outside of the scope of the others—her tent suspended from the homely reality that clung to the rest of the market. The one painting that drew her in was of a girl, skin a reddish dark, flat-faced, thin eyes, but they were looking right at Faye, deep from their maroon stiffness. Not just the girl was remarkable, but also where she stood. Her bare feet touched the lake underneath her atop the reflection of the moon hanging low in the sky behind her between two mountains. From the tip of her seemingly dirty toes rippled out tiny waves that distorted the moon into a flexing, doughy form.

"Terranostalgia," Julia said. She stood now next to Faye, holding a straw bag full of vegetables and meat.

"What?" Faye urged her to repeat the unrecognizable word. The painter stood up and diverted her attention from the canvas she was framing.

"Terranostalgia is a new movement in all sorts of art forms that combines nostalgia for old earth with a dreamlike qualities; the premise is that earth was nothing but a dream." Julia stared at Faye, who could sense her eyes flooding with anxiety.

"It's in South America—the landscape," the old woman said and smiled.

"If you like it, you should buy it." Julia nodded at the woman, before waiting for Faye's response. The old woman took up a hammer and a wooden frame and started working on nailing the canvas in it.

Faye felt odd carrying the small painting wrapped in brown paper. She felt as if she held a relic from a life that didn't belong to her, as if it had been shut in the frame, trapped there forever, for her to keep and revere. She had no reverence for earth. She had no emotion towards her home, because it wasn't home. It was a place full of holes, full of emptiness. The few times she had set foot there again, she could feel her years crawling up to her, catching up, and pulling her toward the ground. Earth was the land of the dead.

Once the smells of the minestrone soup had started filling the loft, she began to clean her room, knowing it was the least she could do, and knowing she might leave it at any moment. The painting lay on the bed, still wrapped, and irrepressible, like a bodily presence all on its own.

Two knocks rapped on the door, then Julia's voice, "Soup is almost done." Faye opened the door, and Julia stood there, holding a hammer and a nail.

"For the painting," she said, and with that phrase, she handed the ownership of the walls, the bed, the armoire and that home-like space to Faye.

_This is how you fix a toilet._

She had to jiggle the handle about twenty times, before she actually opened up the tank and figured out that the lever was shot. She had tried tightening the locknut, figure it could just be lose, attempting to avoid touching the grimy metal, but it was no use. She pulled it out and dipped it in vinegar, half an hour, then began scrubbing it with a toothbrush, but it was rusted to all hell. The ex-owner had probably never replaced or cleaned it, which would have been fine if he'd only bought it from a hybrid metal instead of this old-fashioned rusted thing.

Her father had taught her to be resourceful, and even in minor household repairs he had been useful to her by not being there, almost ever, so that at nine she knew how to unclog the toilet, how to tighten bolts and nuts underneath the kitchen sink and how to program phones, tv's, and computers. He'd tell her mother to just call repairman, to just call anyone whenever she needed it, but she needed him. It didn't make a difference, her little genius Julia would get it done.

Their house had been beautiful. The tall, stained glass lamps, the red wooden floors, the intricate fabric of the furniture, the mahogany shelves, and the rooms: the pink and white shelves, the decorative flowers and leaves carefully stenciled along the walls and the soft, translucent curtains draping from the canopy railings. Her favorite part of her room was her thin and tall chest of drawers, three small ones at the top, where she kept her jewelry, her socks, and her diary and pencils she insisted on buying of all different designs, shapes, and colors, and then four wide drawers, where she kept all her foldable clothes. It was wood, but stained with white paint, so you could still see the brown creases, worn and old. A grandmotherly chest keeping her secrets. It was the most wonderful object in the world.

She became more and more nostalgic each day. It was Faye's presence, like a walking box of Julia's secrets ready to pop out with another confusing memory at any moment. So she treasured the years Faye didn't seem to know at all. Julia had begun asking herself for the last two weeks if it was Faye that remembered correctly, and she that had it all wrong. It was a frightening prospect.

It was a waste, a total waste. She had avoided mentioning anything for a week, going into two, but a job had come up, and she needed to train Faye. But Julia couldn't fully convince herself that this was the right thing to do. This is the smart choice. This is exactly what I needed. But it was no use, those statements couldn't stand up to: she could very well be crazy or have been cleverly sent to spy on me or kill me.

That last theory didn't make sense either, because what this decision was riding on was both Faye's uncanny abilities and her dreams. Her dreams. Julia was actually making a decision based on the crazy mutterings of a girl in shock. But the dreams were too fragmented to be reality. She had the notion of Julia's entire past, but completely muddled, as if the message had gotten warbled on the way to her brain—oh, there she went again with the whole "message from beyond" thing—Julia wasn't a believer in God or the supernatural. Her life thrived on logic and calculation. She pictured the world in lines, angles and vectors, and she explained everything else with the chaos theory, something that made her uncomfortable, but it was just theory after all.

What made her so superstitious in times like these? It was that something couldn't be logically explained, but couldn't be ignored at the same time. It made the history of Oracle that much more plausible. Faye was her Oracle—no—Faye had always been Oracle. Julia was just waiting and waiting for her.

"Ick, shouldn't you wear gloves for that?" Faye said as she entered the bathroom and spotted Julia with her toothbrush and the grime sticking to the skin and underneath her nails.

"Thank you, finally, do you have it?" Julia asked and Faye held out the small plastic bag containing the new lever and chain. "I'll pay you back later," Julia added, and Faye shook her head.

"Don't worry about it. I shit and pee in this bathroom too." She smirked, and then stifled a chuckle.

"Great, thanks for the visual. You can be my guest and take care of this you know."

"Oh no, I unclogged it, that was worse. You get this part." She pulled back, both hands in the air, and a childish smile on her face. She had grown stronger, terribly stronger. With each day, her ease with Julia and the world around her just settled with an incredible speed. Her surroundings became all hers. Her power of adaptation was unrivaled by anything Julia had seen. It was contagious. Her ease became Julia's ease in return. They had become this odd couple, this set of sisters, as if they had lived together and known each other all their lives. It was eerie. It was irrepressible.

"I've been meaning to ask," Faye paused and Julia held her breath, "what is this place anyway? It's like some kind of a warehouse thing. I can't really tell." Julia let go of her breath, and went back to unhooking the chain from the trip lever.

"It used to be an old film studio, a very small independent one, owned and run by this one guy, who was so passionate about it that he decided to build an apartment adjoined to the set. He'd sleep and eat and then through the door he went to film. And one day, he dropped everything, decided he couldn't do it, and that his true calling was to be a writer. Who knows what's become of him." She began installing the new lever and tightening the locknut with the wrench.

"So what's behind that door now?" Faye referred to the door on the wall by the small gym set. Julia would walk in it nearly twice day and then come back out without a word.

It was all a waste, because she couldn't answer Faye right then. She needed at least another day. So she shrugged, and Faye took the hint.

Julia finished reassembling the flushing mechanism and placed the ceramic top back on the tank. She dried her wet hands on a rag by the sink, and then pushed on the handle and watched as the garbling sound returned to normal and the water rolled down the bowl and then it filled back up.

Faye would ask again, most likely tomorrow if not tonight, and by then Julia needed to have an answer. If not, it would all be a waste.

_This is how you shoot a gun_.

Research was the first step. Pulling the trigger was the very last and not at all the most important one, because if all the other steps were taken correctly, then the shot would be perfect. Of course, the person had to be a good shot, instinctive and unfaltering, because thought could not go into shooting; thought had to go fully into safety. That was the only way one could survive.

Faye was good, but she lacked instinct. Julia could tell the moment she saw Faye fire her first shot at her. It was calculated. With her light green eyes, she measured the distance and the angle and fired. It couldn't be like that. Faye would die. Julia was surprised she hadn't died yet.

---

The door opened and Faye held her breath. For days, she had observed as Julia held the a small black box against the knobless door and it opened, and then she disappeared for an hour or two, and came back out with bit of sweat dampening her forehead. The curiosity would have consumed her if Julia hadn't finally agreed to let her walk through it.

It was amazing what she saw. The walls were covered in gray, audioproofing material that surrounded a makeshift shooting range that Julia had set up. Along the walls were two glass cabinets, full of weapons: handguns, small grenades, rifles, pistols, and on and on it went. She was suddenly afraid.

---

"When I have this gun in my hand with full intent to use it, I am nobody else but Oracle. This is what I do. This is how I survive. I am giving you a choice," she said, and then held out the gun by its tip toward Faye. She held her breath, awaiting the Oracle's answer.

"Why are you doing this? Why are you doing all of this?" Faye hadn't taken the gun yet. She would not. She needed answers first.

"Because you need me, and you've got no one else," Julia said. It was only half true. Julia needed her, and had been waiting for her without knowing all this time.

"You believe me? You believe what I told you?" She meant the dreams of course. She couldn't tell who was more crazy, if Julia or herself, and if the dreams were indeed a reality, an oracle.

"It's not about belief, it's about timing," Julia said and paused. "Take the gun," she urged. "You have nothing else to lose."

But what had either to gain? Nothing that they knew. This partnership would save them. Faye knew that because of her dreams, and Julia knew it, because for once in her life she was completely, blindingly trusting her instincts. And her instincts told her in a low, but calm and motherly voice, "what she said, your death, it is coming."

Chapter inspired by Faith Ringgold_ For the Woman's House,_ 1971


	7. Chapter 5: Girl with Death Mask

**Heroes Don't Exist**

Chapter 5: _Girl with Death Mask_

Her head swirled with so many memories: psychic photographs of familiar faces throbbing in and out of her inner eye. The world was coming apart, as if some enormous cosmic needle was unweaving everything she had struggled to create. Perhaps that's why she had never tried drugs, and why watching Vicious during his _Red Eye_ stage had been nearly maddening to her. Julia couldn't withstand any lack of control—the world slipping through the cracks in the delusions created by the pulsing of the drug in the brain. It was a sort of possession, a demonic lovemaking. At least, that's what it felt like when Vicious would try to seduce her in that state. She'd tell him to get a whore. He'd try to curse at her, but the vowels morphed slowly into chuckles and then he'd leave. It only lasted a year, because Vicious may have liked the escape, but he liked power even more. No love could come between him and his conquest of the Red Dragons.

She supposed he loved her (in that special way of loving he had) because she was too much like a man. He loved her like he loved their perfect partnership. He had the powerful Oracle by his side, and that was all that mattered.

Julia's mother protested many times against having her daughter raised by her father to be a _whore-thug,_ as she called it. It's not that her mother didn't love her. It's that to both their parents, Julia and Nelli were possessions. Things to be conquered and stamped with their brands. It didn't traumatize them or had some kind of psychoanalytical effect that forever made her resort to violence. Violence was how her family survived despite her mother's refusal to accept it. Their parenting was the best they could come up with, and Julia had accepted it.

But Julia remembered the one fight when her mother finally gave up. Her parents' fights were all the same. They sounded like animals, if you closed your eyes and imagined you were somewhere else. There was the hiss, stamp, hiss, growl, roar, shuffle, and silence. Until the hisses turned to words, and growls turned to threats of punches—though never executed.

For fuck's sake, Vera, I've had it with you and staking claims to her like she's— he stopped and grunted the end of the sentence.

Like she's my daughter? Vera retorted. The daughter you're teaching to shoot a gun, to act like she's you, like she's a thug? You know what they do to women like that? You do, don't you? I know you do!

There was a loud slap against the wall next to Julia. She could hear everything, and so could Nelli, but she sat there silent like usual. This time she was eating a sandwich slowly, concentrated on its consumption, mouth masticating and slushing constantly.

I am teaching her to survive, because we don't have a son to protect all of you if something happens to me, he said. The accusatory tone was not lost on Vera. It was the man after all that gave the right chromosome. They were his girls on that technicality.

That's your excuse? If you die, we'll just leave. Leave like we should have left a long time ago. I thought they could grow up to be something, Alex, not live in this perfect house but in a shitty world.

The world is like this everywhere, he hissed. If you wanted a perfect marriage and a perfect family, you married the wrong man.

Obviously! Vera used this last word to storm out of the study and into the sitting room, where she would smoke until she had calmed down. He would bring her a drink. They would make up. Then they would probably fight again in a couple of hours, but this time, it would be more subdued. It built up slowly to these stamping, hissing fits. But after this fight, her mother had given up. Julia was his. Nelli was hers. They had come at an impasse that would take them to their deaths. Divide and conquer.

Julia didn't know why she thought of that memory as she packed. Perhaps it was the sense that she would soon have a piece of the past. Perhaps it was Shin's slow, deep voice on the receiver that made her think of her father's coaxing tone.

I think I've found something you'll want, Shin said. Go to Callisto. He'll meet you there.

Of course, Julia didn't know who the "he" was, and she couldn't ask. Shin's communications were one-sided only. It had only been a few months since he started acting rogue (for what reason, she didn't know), and any outside communications that weren't planned could be dangerous for both of them.

"What are you doing?" Faye muttered, as she walked in the room, unannounced. It was not too typical of her to do this, but she had been watching Julia with a glare of suspicion as of late. "Where are we going?"

"There's a new job," Julia said, because there was one. Faye seemed to take this as the appropriate answer, and so her girlish features relaxed.

"Where then?" Faye sat leisurely on the bed—the job was an admission of innocence on Julia's, which meant Faye could let down her guard.

"It's here, on Ganymede, so it should be fairly simple," Julia responded as she folded a thick cotton sweater into her suitcase.

"What do you mean?" Faye had gotten off the bed and was on her feet again. Her long fingers were extended, ready to claw and attack. She had the vengeful look of a betrayed, deceived wife.

"I need you to go at it alone. You should have no problem. The target is fairly under the radar, and not too much muscle."

"Why?" The right question was "are you leaving me," but that would have been too direct for Faye's taste.

"It's not what you think. You'll be fine. I'm going to Jupiter to see an old friend," she paused here as Faye opened her mouth to form some kind of retort. "Don't. Don't ask me. I'll explain when I come back." She wasn't entirely sure she would explain, but this would have to keep her at bay for now. Faye had constant fear of abandonment, and all Julia could do was appease it to the best of her ability. But the girl had to know by now that she wasn't Julia's partner. She wasn't half-Oracle. It would be Faye's first time alone. It would be a good test. Julia knew that Faye wouldn't trust her after this. She had watched her with some contempt and suspicion since the death of Senator Eleanor Boukman. She had seen another side of Julia, the true side of Oracle merging with the person within. It had been shocking, but it had awakened them both from the silly relationship they pretended they had. It was still going to hurt her; Julia could tell that Faye would not take it gracefully. But Julia had to know for sure whether it would break her.

---

She was coming back. That would have to be enough to appease Faye.

But for the first time, Faye would be Oracle all by herself, and she, personally, couldn't stand it. Not after that last job. Not after seeing that shadow of Julia. She was hoping Julia just needed a break from it, like a hit man's version of a quiet holiday. It was only natural after the last client. It had been so successful and such a disaster at the same time. Oracle had been used like a gun: a black barrel standing between husband and wife. Husband ready to kill the wife. Wife ready to seek revenge on the husband. It had been perfectly calculated on both sides. But still, only one could win.

Eleanor Boukman had the perfect smile of a model, but the brow of politician. If you only looked at her eyes, focused on the brown so deep it was black, then you could see her judging you and understanding you at the same time. But her lips curled so perfectly, and her teeth were so white against the soft pink of her lips—such a contrast to her lustrous brown complexion—that it turned the whole expression around. She looked motherly, superior, but like a galvanizing saint. She was telling you to do something in that picture. She was telling you to rise and avenge her.

Her photo was all over the news. They would show it more often than the _video_, than the dozens of footage the stations had of her. The reporters, like Faye, could tell that picture was as good as the living authority of Eleanor. In its perfect glossiness, Eleanor was confident in the outcome that the letter and tape she had made would incite. Confident that her type of justice would come through for her in the end. Eleanor looked powerful enough to rip the blindfold etched in Lady Justice's stone eyes. She had the knowledge that there would be eyes there, perfectly carved out, and perfectly attentive.

It was a shock—only to Faye, Julia seemed completely aloof —when CBC aired the footage of Eleanor sitting in her study, looking the audience right in the eyes. She looked so alive that even Faye herself, who saw Julia shoot Eleanor in the head, could easily have disbelieved the previous report of Eleanor's assassination. Her dark face shone in the dim glow of the lamp next to her. Even the lighting was predetermined to give its audience that ominous sense of a divine prophecy being told to them. Eleanor didn't have the cool glare of business in her eyes. Her face became animated, and her voice emotional as she spoke. She said her husband had planned this all along. She said he was corrupt, and she, according to him, had made the mistake of standing up against him. She admitted with an apologetic expression (eyes softening, but never glancing away from the camera lens) that she could not stop him. But (her eyes glistened) she still had the hope that this would not be true and that these things she was saying would never reach the sound systems of the many homes receiving the broadcast.

Eleanor Boukman had made herself a martyr. But that didn't bother Faye so much as when she went to burn all the research on Eleanor and found that every photograph that she and Julia had taken of Eleanor was empty. She couldn't quite explain it or phrase it correctly when she approached Julia about it. She just gave her the prints. The prints of the streets, of the building entrances, of the coffee shop where Eleanor was supposed to be—in those photos—as the center, the focus of them—but she wasn't in a single one. Her frame, her face, her being had completely vanished from the pictures. It was as if all the energy of her soul could only withstand to be at the center of the one picture they kept showing on TV.

It had always been a common misconception that the news liked the sagging eyes and rigid necks of the guilty as they walked with their sinner expressions. They thought they could ignore the camera and the fact that millions of people who had never met them could judge them so implacably by the simple look of avoidance they had mustered for the reporters. Jonathan Boukman was not like the other guilty faces, because he didn't hide anything. His neck wasn't outstretched to hold his chin high with dignity as others would have done in his case, but he looked grave and pale in his own black skin. He admitted his guilt to the accusing audience, because he knew better than to challenge the word of a dead woman. Senior Senator Jonathan Boukman refused to answer the barrage of questions when the cameras first set their hounding glass eyes on him. It was all in slow motion for him. Voices and waves of arms with microphones rippled all around him as he entered the UND building for the last time. Muscle men formed a human barricade. Cameras flashing and flashing. The world inside and outside of him spinning. She had won. He had killed her, but she had won.

Jonathan Boukman had never loved his wife. It was the conclusion that everyone had surmised, including Faye herself, who knew nothing about him, except that no man could love a woman that he had killed. No man could truly kiss his wife goodbye knowing she would die and actually have any love for her. It was a satisfying conclusion for everybody. And though the courts would never convict him, because to do that would require Oracle's presence at least in court (never mind behind bars), the world had already condemned him. He would become homeless, and when at the mercy of his son—his blood, his flesh, his only link left to world—the once-senator-turned-vagrant would hear his own son deny his male parentage in favor of staying at peace with his dead mother.

You don't cross the dead.

---

Allen Stein, CBC's media director, was the one that handed the tape over in a meeting of all the top executives at the Venus headquarters. They demanded to know how he had gotten this. They demanded to know why only an hour after the news of her death he produced such a valuable thing. They debated whether to call the ISSP. The lawyers stepped in during the discussion over its legality. The ratings will hit the sky—but the scandal, could the company be held responsible—should we contact the UND—perhaps it's better to keep it under for a while—but this is the worst scandal we've seen in decades we have to show it—we could be sued—by who, Boukman—perhaps, but it is in our hands and no one else's—yes, we should take advantage—

Then Allen finally had his green light. In those hours he waited, he watched her beautiful face—aged, grave, and sad. She was so radically different from the Eleanor he had met twenty years before, when he was a lowly political correspondent. When Allen looked into her eyes, he knew he was only man alive to understand all the emotions she held inside. They were bubbling in the surface, threatening to allow a tremble on her lips, a ripple of moisture in her eyes. But stern, stubborn Eleanor held it in for her audience, for her people. She understood that her life did not belong to her. The public owned it, and they owned her death as well. In those gruesome hours that those black-suited custom-carved businessmen murmured in their raspy cigar-smoking voices behind Allen's back, he wondered what he could have done—would have done—if he'd only known. If he'd only opened the envelope she gave the moment he had it in his hand. If he'd only not trusted her. If he hadn't waited.

But he did wait, and when the call came, and they told him that Senator Eleanor Boukman was dead—"assassinated, I'm sorry Al, I know you were good friends"—he knew immediately what was in the envelope. He took it in his hands, opened the manila flap slowly: first pulling off the thin strand of tape, then pressing the two outstretched arms of the metal clasp together, and finally, the hand digging for the prophetic contents. He grabbed the brown folder first, but he set it down. He went in again and reached for the small disk still in there. He pushed it into the slit on the side of his laptop, and held his breath. Was he crying yet? No, not yet. It wasn't real just then. But there she was. Alive on his screen, thank god for the beautiful resolution, so he could see her lips move, her eyes shift, her brow tense. Jonathan had planned her death. He hired Oracle to kill her. Oracle had shot her back of the head, back of her skull to bits. Now, Allen was weeping. Now, his secretary came in, eyes wide on seeing his face wet, but did not say anything. The whole station needed him, but she would not ask him a thing or pass a call. She could not see Eleanor's face, but she could hear her voice, but still, she just closed the door and left him sobbing.

He could picture Eleanor's death in that hotel room, alone, sitting in the chair, calmly waiting with the gun to her head. He wasn't too far off, but not too close either. He could only picture the hand behind the gun as shadowy beast, a nightmarish version of Jonathan himself underneath the black ski-mask and wearing black gloves like those murder thrillers. Allen had written, spoken on, and overseen stories about assassinations. Some old, some recent. He had seen bodies. He had talked with hit men in their prison cells (just one he could remember at the moment). But when it came to imagining what Eleanor went through, he could only draw from fiction, not from years of experience, but up to the left, where memories of the fake blood and black gloved-hands rested.

Julia was the one to do it. When they entered Eleanor's hotel room, Faye lagged behind, just in case. There were no guardsmen to bypass. No secret service. The party was still booming floors below. Her bodyguards were asleep two rooms down. Eleanor had dismissed them. One watched a pornographic film before going to bed, not to be aroused, but to kill the boredom. He hated action flicks, and most other films for that matter.

Julia caught sight of the empty bed first. Her heart leapt for a second. It was all wrong. They had presumably changed Boukman's room number twice, extra-precautions, but it wasn't so. She held up her left hand, which told Faye to halt. Faye couldn't tell what was wrong yet but she faced the opposite direction, ready to kill whoever would dare jump on them. Julia stepped into the room and glanced at each side quickly, gun in hand, silencer set, ready to kill fast and then leave. It was on the left in an armchair where she first spotted Eleanor's silhouette.

"Oracle," Eleanor spoke first. It could be trap, Julia thought. "I've been waiting." Faye had her back against Julia's. She was breathing hard. She heard Eleanor's voice too.

"Senator," Julia uttered. She didn't know why.

"Don't look so alarmed. This isn't a trap. I've no intention of stopping you."

There was nothing to respond with. Nothing to say. In so many years, Julia had never encountered this problem. Had she put a hire on herself? No, it couldn't have been.

"I know my husband was the one that hired you. I thought at first it wasn't true. I didn't know who you were then, what kind of record you had, but I must say I am surprised. I think Jonathan would be too."

Julia lowered her gun slowly. Faye had turned around. Julia could feel Faye's alarmed eyes on her, the gun now pointed at Eleanor, but Julia could not tear her eyes away from the senator. The darkness had now settled in her brain, and she could see Eleanor's glossy skin and the brilliant whiteness of her nightgown. Her black hair was not in the usual bun, but down and stiff around her shoulders.

"Hold back your hair," she whispered to Julia, but Julia didn't move. "I recognize you. You were at the café. You were watching me. Both of you." She took a deep breath, and held her mouth open for a while. They could hear wet movements—she was moving her tongue around.

"I read up on you," Eleanor said. She meant it as flattery. "You're so good. You're death itself, so the rumor goes. You probably think I'm a coward, sitting here waiting for you. I could have at least pretended to fight it, right? But even if I could, even if I tried and won and that somehow you didn't kill me, what would I do then? Take him to court?" Her body didn't move as she spoke only her lips. It was hard to focus on all of her face, because the darkness made it impossibly blurry.

"He made it easy for you. He set it up so neatly; surely, you must have noticed. When he kissed me goodbye, he had this look in his eyes, indescribable really. He was always a terrible liar. He only became a politician, because he could be bad at it. The world isn't full of Machiavelli's." She stopped, the frame of her head toward Faye. "Are you spooked? You haven't killed me yet, so you must be." Faye stepped closer, but Julia held up her hand again.

"I better let you get on with it. My bodyguards are better than they seem. I wouldn't be surprised if they spy on me," a long a sigh and then, "do it from the back. I don't want to see the barrel of the gun before it hits me, and I'm not one to close my eyes. It's a terrible habit I've had since a child." She lowered her voice, and then spoke again. Her arm lifted, fingers moving to the mouth as a quiet sob slipped from her. It wasn't the kind of muffled sound that signaled a break or a weak cry, but rather an irrepressible anger that words weren't enough to convey.

"They're wrong, you know; those that say that I am idealist and that my husband is a realist. He is killing me for his realism, his own wife. I realized it—that he was the wrong man—the first time I slept with him as his wife, and though I couldn't put it into words, my body knew there was something horribly off. I married a corrupted, terrible man, and I knew it. What is it in the human fabric that compels us to be with the wrong person in a wrong marriage?

"If he could have shed his black skin, he would have, and I married him anyway. Black trophy wife to go with the black trophy husband. I was so good for his image. Poor stupid girl from the old neighborhood in lower city of Venus." There were nasal sounds that suggested crying, possible tears glistening on her face, but it was so blurry. So hard to focus.

"Don't look at me like that," she said as if she had better eyes suited for darkness than them. As if she could see them as clear as in daylight, as in noon in that café. "I can feel your doubt. I'm not trying to convert you. I am not confessing to you, but to those around you. But you won't get that either, will you? It doesn't matter." She stood up slowly, and Julia and Faye pulled back. Julia raised her gun. She could feel it was almost over. Eleanor just wanted to give her permission first.

"It's time to go now," she said and looked Faye straight in the eyes. And Julia moved behind Eleanor, saw the Faye's wide eyes and knew that just like her, Faye could see clearly in the dark as if their brains had been fooled into thinking that there was a bit of light. Eleanor's face and body became so clear to see, so palpable, and the senator held Faye's glare until a few seconds before Julia shot her. Her eyes passed beyond Faye, beyond the room, beyond Oracle's presence into another world. And then she was dead.

---

Allen had known her for ten years. She had always looked at him with a sort of severity seated in her eyes—even when they caressed each other, even right before they kissed. Her life had been nothing but ruthless toward her and full of suffering. It was Eleanor against the universe. At least, that's how she always made you feel. She always said that when the world—the real one, Earth—was shattered, everyone became refugees. Suddenly, no one had a homeland. There was no more Western thought, African Diaspora, or Eastern traditions. There were just people confused and without direction. No one could figure out where they belonged anymore. So they became all the worse for it. The more out of place you feel, the more xenophobic you become. You begin to hate others and wish to find some kind of ideal which you fit into. Our instinct turns to the need to feel superior. Even the end of the world couldn't bring people together. But that was what Eleanor fought for. The idealist who the media loved to have go at, but who it also loved to admire.

And yet, there she was in front of him for the first time in months, holding her teacup, head upturned, dark eyes glazed, and looking at nothing in particular. It scared him. The most certain person in the solar system seemed more paranoid than everyone else. She was disillusioned; he could tell. He knew she couldn't afford that. She was a senator. She had to guard herself from all kinds of sentimentality, or they would devour her for her femaleness, her blackness, her background. They would just devour her.

"How's Jonathan?" he asked. The subject of her husband made her head snap back and face him. The severity in her eyes was still absent.

"He's fine. He's gone off to visit some of the Asteroid Colonies," she said, and her lips still hung open, the unsaid words rolling off toward him in her breath: you know, same old, keep up the image, be magnanimous.

"Oh yes, the CBC will be at the press event with him on Thursday. So it's for the whole week?" She nodded resignedly. Is this why she had come to him? Was she willing to risk it all to love him again? No, when Eleanor said it was over, she had meant it. He was being boyishly hopeful.

"He'll be back in Venus on Monday." She tried to set the teacup down, but it nearly slipped from her hand. It landed with a clatter, creating a puddle of brownish liquid at the center of the saucer.

"Eleanor, what is it?" Her name called her back. The severity returned.

"I have a favor to ask of you." A hand reached into her large purse by her chair, and she pulled out a long manila envelope. "I will give you this, and you will not open it. You will not look at it. You will not think about it. This will make your career, I promise you."

"I don't care about that." He lowered his voice. "What is happening to you?"

"Take it, and do as I say." She slid the envelope toward him. He picked it up, and she glanced down at his briefcase. He nodded, and put it inside.

"Well, what the hell's it for then? Safekeeping?" He had a snide tone, and he knew that she would recognize that it was actually worry. He was afraid for her. Her expression softened, and she smiled at him.

"I will let you know when you can open it. Until then, just keep it for me. Please." He ran a nervous hand through his hair, and then down his neck.

"All right, but will you tell me then what this is about?" She slowly stood up, still smiling. It was that way a politician smile when making an uncertain promise. She walked over to him and kissed him on the cheek.

By his ear, she whispered, "I will tell you everything."

When he stood up to leave, he felt the weight of her secret inside his briefcase. He was patient enough to not ask anything for now, but he would give it a week, and then go for it again. She knew better than to just hand him something like that, but he was aware that he could not dare defy her.

He must have been so distracted that he didn't notice when he ran into that woman until he felt the absence of the briefcase in his hand. He looked up at her face—her brilliant green eyes looking at him almost condescendingly as she held the briefcase out toward him. She pulled back some of short black hair, and smiled at him.

"I guess Mondays are tough for most of us," she said, and walked by him. He turned around and apologized briefly. She waved at him dismissively as she sat at table with a blonde across from her. The blonde took off her dark sunglasses, but didn't greet her friend. Instead, she stared past her toward him. The expression in her blue eyes reminded him so much of Eleanor. So much.

Frida Kahlo, _Girl with Death Mask _1938. For chapter notes see profile page. Thanks for reading. :)


	8. Chapter 6: Apprehensive Attraction

To my dear, sweet readers: I'm sorry. I don't deserve your attention or acclamations. I don't deserve your patience. If you have to know the whole story, my computer had a terrible accident, and I lost all of what I had written in the last few months. I had to begin again. I've been rewriting Heroes in the last three weeks. I had a crisis. I didn't think this story was worth writing, but maybe it is.

-Brigidforest

---

**Heroes Don't Exist**

Chapter 6: _Apprehensive Attraction_

The heater broke. It's winter season on Ganymede, and this time we're feeling some record lows. The weather station assures us that it has to do with a cyclical change in atmospheric pressure, but I don't understand what that means. I never studied this in my physics class—not that I remember high school, but still, these sci-fi concepts elude me. I sit on the couch with my blanket, and the T.V. on. I need to hear voices. I need these strangers to fill the room with their presence—with their life. But it's no use, because I know Julia's dead and I'm the only one here.

I woke up without words. I haven't spoken since I opened my eyes. The hand squeezing my vocal chords hasn't let up. I couldn't even shout her name, but my body shot up from bed, and I ran out of my room, or did I crawl? Then I made it to the couch, and I knew she was gone. I felt it like I felt the cold, like I felt the hunger. I couldn't remember the last time I had eaten. I still can't eat. I'm too afraid to open my mouth.

A week has passed since I last remember being conscious. Julia has been dead for three days. It was on the news—one of those twenty-four hour channels that come up with a ton of puns as titles for the same exact story. They get different reporters to tell it each hour: sometimes a woman, sometimes an expert (many experts—policemen, psychologists, sociologists, and beat reporter that specializes in city crime and syndicates), an old newscaster who claims to have never witnessed such a shocking event. They call her the falling Eve, fallen dragon, wingless dragon cast into the fires of hell. She is a symbol of the empire she destroyed. She would hate it. The footage they keep repeating is barely worthwhile. Somebody caught it with one of those communicator cameras. Her pixelated-blonde hair is a fast blur on the screen, and then she hits the ground. She's hit the ground so many damn times I've lost count.

I can't talk. I can't eat. I can barely feel my legs. I think I'm getting my period. I think I'm falling apart. I don't wonder what to do next. I haven't checked my messages. I haven't figured out who I am yet—

I've forgotten everything about me momentarily. I can't tell you my name. I just woke up, and before my body began to move, I realized I didn't know where I was. I had fallen asleep again, but for how long this time? What year was it? What was my name now?

I watch T.V. I try not to think about these things that make me heave and feel like I'm about to go into cardiac arrest. I try to forget Julia sitting on this couch, holding her father's sword—a katana—telling me it was Vicious that killed him.

All this time, she said. It was Vicious.

I try to forget her bewildered stare when I came into the room for the first time since she'd returned. She pointed that thing at me—her eyes regarding me like a stranger, an intruder. I try to forget the wedding ring, and the cold way she handed it to me while trying to gauge my reaction.

Surprised? Julia asked. I held the little gold band cupped in my hand. I was stunned.

In your dreams, Vicious and I weren't married, she said.

I didn't understand what she wanted from me. I can still feel the ring wrapped around my index finger, clinging with undecipherable meaning. I can see the engraved letters and his name glistening: Vincent. I drop it. Vincent. That's Vicious' real name. The coincidence nearly makes me ill. I can taste the burn in the back of my throat.

After the shock, I try to imagine what could have compelled Julia to marry him. I force my mind to paint his portrait, and suddenly, he looks handsome—_desirable_. In my vision, his hand caresses her face and then gently moves to her hair, attracted by the minty smell of it. I look at his eyes as he does this. They seem softer. They open up revealing depths of him I never wanted to know.

I don't see it coming, but his silver-blonde hair morphs into black and his eyes become hazel, and I see Vincent, the one from _my_ past, staring back at me, and then the gun is in my hands, and there's blood, so much of it. But I force my mind back to my imaginary Vicious. I see Julia and Spike together. I feel jealous. Vicious feels jealous. He stands at her apartment door and waits for them. Spike and Julia arrive, laughing, talking loudly with each other. When their eyes meet Vicious' cold yellow ones, Spike becomes wary, maybe even angry, and Julia—I can't make up my mind at first—at one point she looks horrified; at another, resigned.

The rest I fill with what Julia told me. She said that Vicious was stolid. He walked down the stairs and then turned to Spike and said, You can have her. You prefer whores. Vicious leaves without even glancing at her once. Spike's face cannot hide how irate he is, but he's too afraid to respond. He doesn't want to make it worse for Julia.

That night Vicious comes back. She told me how they kissed and then consumed each other in a way that was different from all the times before. I imagine his hands desperate for her. I imagine her triumphant. She's so proud. He needs her. But he surprises her. At the end of the night, when she's half-asleep, he sits up. His head is down, his thin long hair concealing it, and he slouches his body forward. He says nothing, but he senses she's awake. He gets up. He's completely bare as he stands for a moment at the foot of the bed with his back toward her. He gets dressed and leaves—not looking back, not uttering a word of anger or so much as a show of displeasure. Julia lays there for few hours in silence—in the sticky mix of their sweat and sex. When she finds the strength to get up, she showers. In the shower, she cries until the water runs cold.

She told me so much in the last few weeks. I was her priest, and she was seeking redemption, but I had nothing to give to her. Not even my dreams had the promise of a better life than the one she had lived so far. At some point, she gave up. We no longer talked to each other. She ignored jobs. She spent hours a day in the shooting range practicing with her sword. She looked a like a tired Tarantino heroine. She didn't seem to get any better or stronger, but she was obsessed. I let it go. I began sleeping in. Eight hours at first, then ten, until it doubled and I was barely awake the whole day.

Then I wake up and she's dead. I'm here on the couch, facing the T.V. or the ceiling. I don't feel like moving, or like thinking, but I can't help the latter one. Then I realize that I have to go to the bathroom. I hold it in for hours. I try to reason with my body: don't you see, I can't get up. In the end, I have no choice.

When I wash my hands, I try to avoid the mirror, but it's magnetic. I am drawn to myself. My short black hair is stringy and greasy; my eyes are puffy even though I haven't cried. I realize I smell like an animal. I haven't showered in days and days. I close my eyes and lower my head back to the sink. I notice something behind the soap dispenser and pick it up with my wet hand, the water still running. The small tube is smooth, dark, and lustrous. It glistens in the dim light that's above the vanity and above me. The ridges on the round shape feel good as I press it tight between my fingers. It's lipstick—hers. I try to read the bottom label, but it's a bit faded. I think it says, "Red Poppy." I open it. The color is deep, but not like blood. It's brighter than that.

I take it with me to the living room area and put it on the coffee table across from my couch. I lie down and bring the blanket up to my neck. My moist hands are so cold that I can't stand it.

The first time I hear the strange noise, I don't know what it is. I think the walls are starting to creak, but the second time, it's quite clear—a loud click. I know immediately it's the front door. My mind tells my body to leap out of the couch, but it's not responding. I'm screaming. It's Julia! It's Julia! There's been a mistake! The news has blunders like those so often—but still, I don't move. The door opens, and I feel a rush of cold against my face. My eyes are toward the muted T.V. and not the door. I should have lain down the opposite way.

I hear the steps, light but faint. She isn't wearing heels, but she's here. I am elated but still paralyzed. No matter how many times I plead with my lips—say something—they don't respond.

"Faye," she says. When I recognize the voice, my body jumps up on its own. I turn toward her. "Are you okay?" she asks, but I can't see her anymore. She says more things and rushes over to me, but I can't hear her clearly anymore. I'm sobbing so loud I can't make out any of her words. I can't breathe. Trembling, my legs take off to the bathroom. I pull the lid of the toilet so forcefully that I crack the top. I heave and then throw up. It's mostly nothing—phlegm, some bile and acid, mostly nothing. I flush with a weak hand. As the toilet fills, I lay my back against the tub. I see her hand pushing the bathroom door open. I still pretend that I'm going to see Julia, but it's not her, and the second shock of it almost makes me throw up again, but I don't move.

Ella looks frightened. She isn't wearing her usual glittery eyeshadow, or her boyish cargo pants, and even her messy multi-dyed hair is drawn up into a bun. She looks more feminine than usual, even in that large long jacket that swallows up her small body. Her tanned face looks so juvenile, so vulnerable.

"Are you okay?" she repeats her question but in a lower tone. I want to say yes, but my throat aches. I try to clear the rasp, and I can't. I give up and just nod.

"Okay." She pats her jacket with her hands as though searching for something. "Okay," she says again. "I'm going to make some tea." It was so much like Ella to do that. She came from some Euro-mixed district where they solved everything with a hot drink. It was the medicine for the soul, Ella had once said.

I stand up and turn on the tub's faucet. I want to feel clean, because if I don't my skin will fall off. When I come out in my robe, Ella pours some hot water in a coffee mug with a little string and a square orange tag hanging on the side.

"It's blueberry. It was all you had," she explains apologetically. I have the sudden urge to slap that sad-puppy expression from her face, but I take the cup and the honeybear bottle she hands me.

"I called you so many times. Well, just yesterday. Before that—" She stops. She has nothing to say about it. Suddenly, I feel sorry for her. I think that she must have been closer to Julia than I was. She certainly knew her longer. Ella looks devastated. I look numb.

"Did you see it on T.V.? You must have. I think everyone did. They called her "The Fallen Eve" of the Red Dragons. But it was Julia, in case you weren't sure. She told me she wasn't sure that you knew she had left. What happened, Faye?"

"I fell asleep," I respond. I say it before I know that I am going to or that I can.

"You don't remember?" Ella's expression is of indignation and anger. But I can't tell her anything. I can't comfort her. I don't have what she's looking for. No, I didn't stop her. I just fell asleep. Get out—I want to scream—but this time no words come out.

"I think she killed him," Ella whispers. "Vicious."

And it hits me so hard that I fall back and land on the floor. I remember it like a dream.

"Mao Yenrai is dead." That's what started her hunt for the sword. But there was another call, more recent, the one that made her leave to go face Vicious. I get up and I run to where my communicator is. There are messages. The first startles both Ella and me. It's Julia's voice.

"1-1-6-5-7-7-0-9-8-7-0-0-3-3-1-2-5-8-0-1." Then she repeats the same series of numbers again.

"What does it mean?" Ella asks. I shake my head. It's a sour goodbye.

The next ten messages are all from Ella, pleading for me to call her. She says nothing. I have two saved messages after that. The first one is inconsequential—it's the second one I need to hear.

"Julia," he says. "There's a been a coup. He failed." That's all. It was the same voice that told us Mao Yenrai was dead months ago. She had an informant from within the Red Dragons.

"Oh god," I whisper. I grab Ella's arm for support, because I think I might fall again. "I remember." I remember when Julia left. She was at the foot of my bed talking to me. But my eyes, they felt like lead. It doesn't cross my mind to tell her, don't go; I must stop her; she's going to die. All I say is "Watch out for that fall." It doesn't make sense, but Julia, she says okay, and then she leaves. And I—sleep claims me, and that's it.

"It's not your fault." Ella tries in vain to console me.

"I need to be alone," I tell her. She looks disappointed, but I don't have time for her. My head is spinning. She grabs her jacket and heads for the door. Before leaving, she says, "It's too cold in here."

My feet are so numb that I don't feel the concrete floor below me. I sit on the couch, and her tube of lipstick catches my attention again. I pick up my comm. and play her message again. The numbers sound like beats, like dance moves—1-2-3, 1-2-3—like meter in poetry. But it doesn't matter what they sound like, because they mean nothing to me. Is it code? Is it a trick? Is it goodbye? I pick up the lipstick and open it. I try the color on my hands. It's too red for my complexion, so it ends up resembling a deep gash.

This color doesn't suit me.

---

Chapter inspired by Liz Insogna's _Apprehensive Attraction._


	9. Chapter 7: Nighthawks

To my dear readers, thank you, even if you don't review, just seeing you are reading fills me with excitement and more energy to keep writing. Do let me know what you think. I'd truly appreciate it. This is not my favorite chapter of the bunch, but we're moving into heavy plot mode, so it's a necessary evil. The next chapter should be out by the end of this week (gasp! I know).

-Brigidforest

**Heroes Don't Exist**

Chapter 7: _Nighthawks_

"Look't you," she said. "There's parts missing. You're not falling apart—right?" She brought her hand to her lips, squeezing the bottom one between her index and middle fingers. It had always been a nervous habit of hers the surfaced whenever she was trying to figure something out. "You got a girl? No, not yet. Lonesome, that's how you'll get. I was married at eighteen. Look't you. You're old now. But don't worry. Your arm, it looks fine. The right woman will get used to it."

Then he woke up, and she faded away. He hadn't dreamt in years, even less of his mother, who'd died so long ago. That morning when he went to get coffee and heard his steps echo through the entire ship, he looked at Ein sleeping next to his bowl, barely raising an eye to greet him, and then he looked at the brown crusted bottom of the pot and decided he needed more than coffee could give him.

He'd had a good family life. His mother had taken care of him. His father had stuck around until his adulthood. Jet hadn't experienced anything traumatizing enough to scar him to a sense of inevitable self-destruction. He still remembered his mother in the living room dancing to old time singers like Bessie Smith, and his father walking in, laughing at her, grabbing her and holding her tight as she squirmed away from the sweat and dirt of his day at the construction site.

You dirty old fool, she'd say and laugh. Sure, there were times when they would fight heatedly about money and bills. The worst ones were about some medical expenses that Jet didn't find out until later were precursors to his father's pulmonary edema. Complications from it took his father's life when Jet was twenty three. His mother died soon after, probably from a broken heart. She always said that the old fool was her soulmate. But that was okay with Jet. He'd seen it coming. His childhood had been good—fulfilling. His folks had been proud that he decided to become a cop. They were so damn happy when he told them that he might as well have said he wanted to be a doctor.

Weren't your earliest years supposed to shape who you'd be for the rest of your life? Was there something hidden in his past that could have somehow predicted that he'd be sitting at a bar in the middle of the day with a chunk of fake arm attached to the side of his body, clinging to him like some alien object he'd never get used to?

Jet hated these type of bars, open all day long, sheltering all the world's nobodies in one easy location. It was different altogether when he came with a mission in mind. He loved the access of this barnyard corralling its bountiful sheep. In those cases, he hadn't been one of them but an outsider who happened to inevitably drink the same lousy shots and breathe the same carbon air. It was okay that nobody guessed that he wasn't one of them, because that was exactly what he'd wanted. It was part of the hunt, part of the camouflage. But at this time he would have given the world for someone to accuse him of looking for a bounty instead of minding his own business. Looking around and seeing these harsh faces, thick muscles, and heavy voices, it was easy enough to think that you were dealing with the world's most dangerous subjects. But in most cases, danger was all in perspective. Danger is not the same as power, and all those men had no power. But the weak always present the most threat. They become unpredictable because they're so vulnerable.

But Jet Black, ex-cop, bounty hunter extraordinaire, for the first time in his life, had no reason to be at this kind of bar at that kind of hour. He drank his scotch slowly and didn't look around. He wasn't alert, or waiting for anything to happen, or somebody conspicuous to show up. He had simply ended up here, because he had nowhere else to think. He couldn't do it on his ship. There were pieces of the Hammerhead to be glued back together and hovering around them made him angry at that damn-no-good partner of his. Spike was the reason he had left the ship in the first place. Jet left with the resolve to find the bastard, and drag him back if he had to squeeze him by the neck with his cybernetic arm.

But with each step on Alba's wet asphalt, his resolve faded. He couldn't make Spike do anything. He couldn't convince him that the syndicate was all a part of the old Spike, and that this new crap didn't have anything to do with the bounty hunter that had partnered up with Jet. Yeah, that was like talking sense into a dog. Even Ein was more reasonable than that.

Cheers, he thought as his finger circled his shot glass. To the end, he scoffed and tilted his head as another swallow of scotch disappeared. He asked for another with his most disgruntled expression toward the bartender. The stiff eyebrows, tightened jaw, and flared nostrils said, _I don't talk—don't even think about it_. So the bartender, wearing his most elusive mode of compliance as he rubbed his five o'clock shadow, simply poured Jet another drink, knowing well that the old cop would spend another ten minutes just staring at it, but hell, he liked the quiet ones for a change.

It was four in the afternoon, and there were only ten people or so in the bar, not all shady, but some seemingly homeless. It was after the hundredth internal grunt toward the neo-jazzy crap playing the background that he realized why he'd had that dream. He belonged here, among the homeless and the fugitives, and the people who really had no place to go, no family holidays, no cousins, no uncles, no backyard barbecues. But that was the curse of the new world, no longer held in one planet but scattered across the many objects orbiting the sun. His mother was born a few months after the gate incident, fatherless, and with her mother, they were the only extant members of their family. It wasn't his fault he had no living ties. It was a symptom of the times.

At around 4:30, a few more stragglers shuffled into the bar, and among them was a young white collar in a black overcoat. He looked somber and stood out only slightly from the crowd. He asked for a gin and tonic and took a casual glance toward Jet. It was fairly obvious to Jet that he was there scouting out somebody, and he didn't try to be too subtle. Jet figured he blended enough to with one of the other syndicate sleazes. After a few minutes, the young guy took a cigarette from his coat pocket and lit it, but he never took a drag. He sat alert and watched everybody on the reflections of the bar glasses.

"It went down last night," someone said, and the white collar's face stiffened.

"Yeah, but what's it mean for us?" a second man asked. They were seating in a booth right behind Jet.

"It doesn't matter. It's change, bad change. It's a sudden fucking shift of power. It means something's gonna blow up."

"I'm not sticking around. I'm telling you. I'm out of town, see the kids. It's been a while."

Jet leaned forward and cast his eyes down. Suddenly, he realized what they were talking about. The Red Dragons. The coup had really happened, and Spike, he could be—

The young white collar turned toward Jet and fixed his startled gray eyes right on him. His hand was inside his coat.

"Get down," he said to Jet as he dropped from the stool to the ground, and then the gunshots were everywhere.

---

Options—nobody really likes them. People pretend they do, and they pretend it makes them feel better, but really they prefer structure instead. We are animals of stability. We ask for choices, but only if they come with some guidance, with a leader, a sign, a finger that points to the right path—a yellow brick road. Choices mean nothing. because there's only one way we must go. There's only one path that we could really allow ourselves to take. And it's always so much easier to have someone else tell you what to do.

Laughing Bull did not move and did not smile. It seemed as though he did not breathe. His still, tanned face belied nothing of his fortunetelling trance. He was stoic, perhaps dead. At times, he looked ancient, godly with his sunken cheeks and wrinkled skin above his eyes, and at other times, he looked like a simple old man, not a being that possessed any power.

The seconds dragged as Spike waited for Laughing Bull's revelation. It startled Spike when the old Indian's hand thrust out of his robes, but there was more waiting to be done. The sand dripped from the crumpled cracks of his fingers for minutes. His small tent became a slow hourglass until Laughing Bull finally opened his eyes. They were wet and the black of his pupils abnormally large.

"I can see it," he said. "She's come—the woman—she has no destiny, no past, no future. And yet she lives forever and ever."

Julia. Spike nodded. He waited for the interpretation.

"I have no answers for you," Laughing Bull said. Spike shook his head—that wasn't the deal. There had to be something in the sand. What the hell was he doing all that time? Sleeping?

"No, wait, where is she? What about Vicious?"

"You don't understand. You do nothing. This woman—she has lived before you and will continue to live after you."

"Okay, fine. But if you want something, then tell me at least where she is."

"I told you. She is come. She waits for you." The sand stopped spilling from his hand. "It has already begun without you."

Spike's eyes fell on the ripples of the sand that had formed on the mat. She's in Mars, he thought. He reached in his pocket and spotted his card and his pack of cigarettes. He tossed the card into the sand and then lit his cigarette.

"There's not much on there, but keep it. I won't be needing it." Spike walked out of the tent, still unsure of what he would do, but he had one of those feelings. He needed a coin. He headed toward the Bebop. Jet would have a coin. Then he would decide. He should have gone with the coin in the first place.

But he wouldn't need the coin. He realized that when he entered the hangar of the Bebop. He could smell it in the air. It was like that day in the dark of her apartment. The air was damp from the rain outside, and it felt unusually cold.

Come with me. We'll get out of here, he said.

Go where, she asked, but she meant—no, I won't go. It's not enough.

It wasn't completely dark inside the Bebop, but something was different. Everything was so still. Jet didn't come running out. Then there was the deadly silence. He entered the common room and saw Jet sitting on the couch with his right leg bandaged and supported by the metal crate in front of him. Spike was the one who would go off and get shot, not Jet. He didn't like this role reversal.

"What the hell happened to you?" Spike said. He meant to sound concerned.

"Bar brawl," Jet said. There was no, "where were you?" or "I've been looking for you" or "Why do I bother?" No angry face. No guilt-tripping lecture.

"You've been in bar brawls before. You don't get shot." Spike's skin was getting hot. He didn't feel so well.

"It happened so fast. I met one of your old friends, Shin. I suppose it was some Red Dragons that shot up the place. He must have known they were following me, or maybe it was her." Spike's eyes widened, but Jet only paused briefly to gage some reaction. "So then we duck behind the counter, bartender's dead, bullets everywhere, and we didn't see him coming from inside. Next thing I know my leg's shot, and when Shin turned to shoot back, the man was dead. She had killed him."

"It was the least I could do. I did lead them, unintentionally, to you," she said. Spike had heard the steps from behind him, but he hadn't dared to turn around. She had emerged like a ghost that had always been hidden within the metal walls.

She walked past him toward Jet and took a brief glance at his leg.

"What are you doing here?" Spike couldn't think of anything else to say, but he knew he couldn't just gape at her, or run to her, or kill her.

"I deserve that," she said.

"You two should take a walk. Catch up," Jet said—not nervously, as he usually would have been under the circumstances, but decidedly. He was kicking them out, and who could blame him. He looked terribly tired. "I'll be fine." That was his final say before he turned away from them in a sort of cold defiance.

Spike walked back out through the hallway, past the galley and the armory, past the hangar and through the dock that led to the street. Her steps followed not too close behind. By the time he reached the busy avenue, he slowed down and let her catch up with his pace. Then they walked at each other's side. Neither said anything. Neither seemed to know where the other was going, but at last, when they reached the sub station, past the cars and people strolling along with friends, in couples, or alone, all with a specific destination in mind, and past the dangers that surely surrounded them if anyone were to recognize who they were and see them together in such a way, they both stood waiting for the TRAM that would take them where they had been subconsciously heading to all along.

They got off at the first exit in the old neighborhood. Memories threatened to return, but Spike refused them passage. The rain had simmered down to a drizzle, but it was dinnertime and so most of the sidewalks were deserted. The only sounds against the wet pavement were of their reluctant steps. Spike wondered if Julia felt numb too, from the cold, or if she could even feel the water clinging to her face.

When they reached the cemetery, Spike felt Julia's eyes on him, but he kept walking and stopped only at the place he had imagined meeting her a million times in his head. It felt like so long ago.

"Annie's dead," Julia said to him, but Spike didn't register her words. He focused on the spot he had dreamt of her standing, waiting for him, where he would have given her a rose—a token of gratitude for risking her life and choosing him. Julia stepped in front of him, and with a stern expression on her face, she shook her head as though she knew exactly where his thoughts lay.

"You were always such a romantic," she said, not condescendingly but with an air of indifference. He glared at her and imagined that slight mockery in her eyes. She was demeaning their whole past, belittling all he had felt for her. He died for her. But before he could properly react, she approached him, wrapped her arms tightly around him and rested her head on his shoulders. The emotions left untouched for so long came barreling back into him. He could not move. He was paralyzed under her power once again.

"I'm sorry. I wanted to see you again. We could run away still, but not—no, I guess we can't. It's too late now." She pulled away from him to look at his reaction. He couldn't decipher her expression. All he could think of was the blue glow of her eyes, the curve of her lips, and how vulnerable and beautiful she seemed in the dim, misty light permeating the night.

"Let's go back," he said. "Let's get out of this rain."

This time, on the way back, the silence allowed little room for thoughts or emotions. The buildings loomed around them and the windows stared. The closed doors judged them in their stiff manner, telling them that Julia and Spike did not belong anywhere—they had no home. But Spike led her nonetheless to the only shelter he had left.

She entered the room where he slept (Jet had somehow wandered to his own room, but neither of the reunited lovers questioned when or how), and Spike could easily guess what she was thinking. The bare walls revealed nothing about him. The bed was messy, but it had no sense of ownership—not one object of the room did. It was dark and bleak. The only signs of him were a green pack of cigarettes and an old black jacket lying on a metal table. The room had no permanence, but as far Julia could recall, no room he lived in ever did.

He began getting undressed. He reached under his bed for his bag of clothes. She began by taking off her long overcoat. He threw her a shirt. She pulled her hair up with a hair band she had in her coat pocket. She put on his shirt but kept her wet pants on.

"We'd better find you something dry," he said.

"I brought clothes. They're in the room across."

He resented having given her his shirt, but he couldn't ask for it back now. He couldn't tell her, well then, go to your room and get your damn clothes. He couldn't ask: what hell do you want from me?

I don't want anything. Only to talk.

"We'll talk when you're ready," she said and left to her room. He didn't move to stop her. He was too angry to give her the satisfaction of pleading. She acted as though he was in some kind of emotional breakdown. He couldn't stand it, so he sat in his room for hours. He smoked only half a cigarette, letting most of it go to waste. He ignored his aching body, which to longed to be near her again. His mind fought his physical weakness. What would he gain from being near her again?

But he couldn't do it anymore. His anger had undone him into a ball of irrepressible want. He walked across the hall, into her room, barely lit by a dim recess light in the corner. His body sought hers. He grabbed her, and she did not seem surprised. He pressed his lips against hers and pried open her mouth with his tongue. She relented almost immediately if not mechanically.

Hours passed and they did not utter a single word. Their bodies touched and their breathing reverberated against each other's skin. She gave him whatever he wanted or needed. She succumbed silently to some of his most forceful bouts. It was his way of punishing her while at the same time having her. But he knew when she'd had enough. In one those pauses, she stood up, bare in the darkness, and lit up a cigarette.

"You know why I'm here Spike." She turned the small light back on. Some body part had probably stumbled onto the switch. Neither had noticed until it was over. "You can only run for so long until you've run out of energy, and it catches up with you."

"It has nothing to do with you anymore," he retorted as he sat up.

"Is that what you've told yourself?" She was ruthless.

"This is between me and him." His voice was low and deep. It was a man-to-man battle she had no business interfering. She put out her cigarette and put on a clean shirt and some pants. Then she reached underneath the bed and pulled out a black katana.

"This is unfinished business, Spike." She held out the sword horizontally in front of her. His eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness that he could see the thin light reflected in the etchings of the silver blade. It was the intricate shape of a long, serpent-like dragon. "Vicious killed him, Spike. He killed my whole family. He killed Mao, Annie, Rob, and now the Van. We're all that's left. You, me, and Oracle."

"What do you plan to do? Avenge your father?"

The white hand holding the sword fell limp at her side.

"You knew," she whispered. "How did you? No, of course you did. He trusted you. He reared you."

"Julia." He stood up. He suddenly forgot all his anger, overwhelmed by hers. He reached towards her.

"Don't touch me." She cleared her throat and put the katana down.

"We'll go together." It was his apology. They were even now.

"When were you planning on going?" She was as cold and stern as ever. It was business now.

"I'm not sure. Sometime soon. He's waiting."

"We're a part of the old Red Dragons. His coup won't be complete until we're out of the picture." Julia sat down next to Spike on the bed. She was always like that—always betraying so little of her emotions. He had never really been sure that she loved him.

"Your father—I didn't think—I thought he was a traitor. I thought you knew." He meant it. He hadn't known that Julia had believed her father was innocent, or, well, he hadn't really thought about it. Some part of him believed that Vicious had done it for Julia. He'd never questioned it.

"It doesn't matter. Not anymore." She lay down on the bed. "Let's just sleep. Just this one time, let's sleep."

It was as though he hadn't slept in years. His eyes closed and a few minutes later he was already dreaming. The images were half-past, half-future; half-pleasant, half-pain; half-fantasy, half-real. He could see himself standing by her building, a hand full of roses. It was pouring. He could barely keep a cigarette lit. The streets were empty. The alley smelled of wet garbage. That was the first time he went to see her. He didn't know what to do or how to behave. He bought roses because he'd seen it in the movies his mother used to watch. He had been so stupid.

Though his mind was unconscious, his body knew something was wrong before he even woke up. He sprung up the moment he felt the bed empty and hurriedly put on his pants. He walked out into the hall—it was still night—and then took the stairs down into the common room. He could see nothing at first, but he could hear something. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out her silhouette, then the brightness of her blonde hair, which was pulled back in a cleaner manner, until he could finally see the body suit she wore and small objects she stuffed into her long overcoat. She put a second gun in her holster and put the coat on.

"What is this?" he asked.

She turned to face him. In her hand, she held a small pistol he hadn't noticed. She aimed it at him. He didn't have time to understand, but he just felt the blood leaving his face and his heartbeat vibrating through his body. He tried so hard to see the details of her face in the darkness, but he couldn't. He could see outlines while his mind filled in the rest, but there was no visible expression. Was she sorry? Was she trying to save him? To kill him? What? What! He wanted to scream, but his lungs were failing. What was wrong with him? Stop her! Take her!

You may never understand.

He heard the click and shot simultaneously, and then felt the most horrible though not unfamiliar pain all throughout his chest. He fell backwards, and he could have sworn—really he could have—that she had to walk over him to get to the hangar door.

---

Chapter inspired by Edward Hopper's _Nighthawks_, 1942


	10. Chapter 8: Face Lift

As I promised, here is the next chapter. If you're just tuning in, Faye has her own plans for Vicious. Again, thanks for reading. I've had a lousy week, but "I ain't bovvered."

-Brigidforest**  
**

**Heroes Don't Exist**

Chapter 8: _Face Lift_

His knuckles instantly became red from his forceful rapping at the door. It hadn't occurred to Spike that she wouldn't answer, or that perhaps she wouldn't even be there. He needed her—never mind the many months that had passed since he had last seen her. Too much happened in the last few days, and he needed a refuge or an outlet, otherwise he would certainly implode. His life weighed heavy on him, and in reality, she was all he had left. There was no one else he could go to that wouldn't ask questions and that wouldn't need answers. He needed to feel something so he wouldn't suddenly disintegrate from existence.

"Spike?" The door finally opened. She looked confused to see him, but she invited him in regardless, as though months of lost contact had instantly melted away. The apartment felt cooler than he last remembered, and compared to the sticky outside heat, it was such a welcomed relief. He entered the familiar red living room with its lounge chaise and daybed and the many framed black and white photos of Paris, a place that had long ceased to exist. She had proudly pointed out each item of her collection to him. They were antiques, and she had acquired them from one of her clients. She pointed to the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, a straight shot of the Louvre, and some random pictures of a bread shop, cheese shop, and meat shop with their signs written in cursive French.

"Sit," she said. "You're lucky I wasn't with someone. I'll go wash up." She had a thin, silk robe that barely reached her thighs. She pulled it tight around her body as she turned around towards the hallway.

"That won't be necessary." It was urgent.

"It's necessary for me. Have you really forgotten? Besides, you gave me no notice. It's your own fault. You do have cash, right?"

He nodded.

"Just making sure. I don't know if you're even the same man since I last saw you. Anyway, I'll be just a few minutes." She disappeared into the back rooms, and after a few seconds, he heard the initial moan and creak of the pipes of the condo flooding with water, and then it settled to a steady hum. He could barely contain his anxiousness. His adrenaline rushed through him, to his legs, which tapped incessantly on the ground in short, jerky movements. The red walls made him dizzy and hot. He tried to distract himself by focusing on his favorite picture on the wall—the meat shop. The store, unlike the others, had no door or blocked entrance. You could see the people lined up against the glass case waiting their turn. But they weren't what made the photo so remarkable compared to the others. There was this woman with a short blonde bob. She stood on the pavement, and he couldn't really tell whether she was going in or just walking by, but she had turned just as the picture was taken. She faced the camera straight on, and it seemed as though she was the only thing in focus. Her eyes were dark brown and her expression was passively reprimanding the photographer. Spike wondered if that girl had gone up to the guy afterwards and asked him to discard the picture. Had the photographer meant to catch her? Had he even noticed her?

"It's been a long time." Rebecca finally emerged only a few minutes later as she had promised, but his anxiousness had slowed the wait into what felt like hours. She had on a simple black dress and her blonde hair hung softly at her shoulders—the tips still moist. She had no make-up on, which is what he liked. She remembered all his preferences without trouble. It was this way that he met her, in a way that she had resembled Julia the most. She had blue eyes, which were slightly darker than Julia's and which changed colors depending on her mood or the day. She warned him about it, but that was a minor issue. Today, her eyes were aqua, a soft blend between two colors, but as always, it was close enough.

"I was beginning to think you died."

She led him to the second bedroom in her condo. It was her rule. The master bedroom could not be used. She only allowed her clients in the living room and the guest bedroom. They weren't even allowed in her bathroom or her kitchen. If they wanted something to drink or to take a piss, they'd have to leave.

"Or worse, I thought you'd dumped me for someone else. Not better, of course, but certainly cheaper," she said as she drew the blinds closed.

"I don't want to talk this time. I just—"

She nodded. "Of course."

She slowly lay down on her side on the gray bed so that her hair would softly spread on the pillow. She was supposed to play quiet but coy. And yet, this time, there was a strange aura around Spike. The motions weren't systematic. It wasn't what she had been used to with him. He knelt, with her body between his legs, and pulled her roughly by the wrists to face him. She glared back at him with a sober expression. He hovered above her with an intense expression of displeasure. He started pulling off his shirt quickly, but did not even bother to fully take off his pants. Rebecca grabbed onto the bed sheets in fistfuls to brace herself for the outburst of his imminent rage.

Supporting himself with the metal headboard, he thrust into her without touching any other part of her body. His glazed eyes signaled his trance. Their bodies moved mechanically, willingly or not. But it's not so easy to push out the mind and its ebbing emotions. It is a tide that will not relent. It subsists with anger as its gravity—a pull that refused to let Spike reach his moment of release. The distraction was so much that the blood kept surging back to his brain, fighting between the body and the consciousness, as the memory of his meeting with that woman, Faye Valentine, kept coming back to him. His meeting with her had ended abruptly after they each told and fitted their jigsaw pieces of Julia's life.

I woke up, he said to Faye at the end of his story. Julia was gone. She had shot me with a sleeping dart so strong it nearly killed me. He could see Faye's annoyed expression, and how she judged him. Even as he purged himself with Rebecca, he could feel Faye judging him from wherever she was.

Would you like me to feel sorry for you, Faye responded after a few seconds of silence. Would you like me to tell you that it wasn't your fault? That Julia just used you?

He pushed deeper into Rebecca with all the fury against Faye's reactions and her condescending words. He had kept cool in front of her. He didn't want to give her the satisfaction of seeing him emotional or knowing how much he hated Julia for what she had done.

You never told me exactly how you met Julia, or why you weren't there when she left you, Spike retorted.

Are you trying to pin it on me now? Faye smiled passive aggressively.

You slept through it just like me, didn't you? The question awakened something in Faye. She stood up suddenly and had her face so close to his that he could smell her menthol cigarettes on her breath.

_You_ don't get to judge me, Spiegel. I am sparing your life. You deal with your guilt on your own.

Is that why you've come? he asked her. To kill Vicious? She ignored him and walked toward the door. He felt no urge to warn her, or even casually tell her, that she was going to die, and that this was all Julia's fault.

"This is all your fault," he hissed as he felt his body tensing into climax. He glimpsed below him afterwards and caught Julia's face dissipating and melting into Rebecca's thin, European features. Rebecca stared back at him as though she did not recognize him. Embarrassed suddenly, he climbed off her, feeling more naked than he had ever felt before. He was sweating and he could hardly breathe properly. She went to the bathroom and cleaned herself up. She returned wearing a white robe and holding a hand towel, which she gave to him. She then sat back down on the bed and reached into one of the drawers from the nightstand and pulled out a leather case full of clove cigarettes. The pungent-sweet smell of cloves eased him like the scent of burning herbs in Laughing Bull's hut.

"She's dead." Rebecca stared pensively at him. He wiped the dripping sweat from his face and controlled his breathing until he could finally speak.

"How do you figure?"

"I'm psychic." She laughed at him, lightly, not mockingly, and after a long drag she spoke again. "I guess you might say I'm an expert. Most men that come in this room do so with a sense of urgency, and they're always so full of guilt. There's all types guilt fucks. There's the I-hate-my-wife fuck, or even stranger, the I-love-my-wife-but-I'ma-sick-perv fuck, or the I-wish-I-could-kill-her, and the ever famous, my-ex-is-a-bitch. And then, every so often, like a shooting star, comes the scary one—the ghost fuck." He didn't respond when she said this. He was paralyzed and staring at her like he had summoned the devil.

"Oh Spike, relax. I'm just messing with you. You've definitely changed. The truth is that it's obvious something's happened because you were crying, dear, through the whole the damn thing." Her pretty face had sobered up, and she had stumped out her cigarette. She regarded him with a sympathetic frown. The realization that his face was so moist not because of sweat but tears almost knocked him down. He took the towel again and started rubbing his face as hard as he could until the fabric scraped his cheeks and made the skin tight and raw.

"Hey." She neared him and pried his hands from his face. "Stop it. I'm not going to tell anyone. There're worst things to be ashamed of here." She pulled the towel away from him. "Look at your face. It's so red. I'll bring some water to wash up."

"Rebecca," he began.

"Don't explain. You said you didn't want to talk. I respect that." She didn't want to hear it. She didn't want to get that personal again, but Spike was like that, unrestrainable.

"She died seven months ago. Vicious killed her." She flinched and then she opened her eyes suddenly.

"The Red Dragons, the coup. I heard about that. It was in the news even, right? Spike, she wasn't the girl that fell from the building? Fallen Eve?" When Spike didn't respond or look at her for a while, all she could utter was a stunned, "Jesus."

"I'm not coming back, ever." He was saying goodbye this time.

"I figured," she answered after a long pause. He dropped a small wad of money on the bed after he finished getting dressed. Rebecca sat still for a few seconds after she'd heard the front door shut. Spike Spiegel was a man you would try to forget but couldn't. It was like his intensity penetrated your skin, and you felt all his emotions in you, and you couldn't shake them. That's what it was like. He was her favorite and least favorite client all in one. The only one she'd had a hard time being indifferent to. The only one that filled her with regret.

She closed her eyes and recalled the blurry image of the falling blonde. The picture lingered as she stood up and went to the bathroom to finish washing up. In the mirror, she saw herself in a way no man could see her. She touched a lock of her blonde hair and imagined it pulled upwards by the force of the air, fluttering hopelessly above her, desperately trying to grasp for safety, to spread as wide wings and fly. She had many times fantasized leaping off a rooftop and right then, she could feel the force of the gravity as she took that false step forward. Her mind slowly clarified the memory of the blurry news broadcast to reveal Rebecca's soft, clean face. Holding her breath, she turned the faucet knob and washed away the thought.

---

Three soft knocks at the hotel door made him panic. He glanced at the clock on the nightstand—it was only noon. He wasn't expecting anyone. He grabbed his handgun and cocked it. He turned off the lights. He hadn't told anyone he was staying there. No one was supposed to know that he was even in Mars. He took a deep breath to calm the adrenaline rush surging through him as he walked alongside the wall toward the door. Slowly, he unlocked it. The person hadn't knocked again.

"Come in," he said. The knob turned, and he aimed his gun.

"Shin?" she whispered as she came into the view. The heat of the streets followed in after her. She stepped inside the dark hotel room and turned to face the barrel of Shin's gun. She jumped backwards and then took a sigh of relief when he spoke her name.

"Are you trying to give me a heart attack?" Ella muttered as she pressed one hand against her chest. Shin lowered his gun and flipped the light switch on. She glanced around the neat room and saw his computer on the cherry wood desk. Not even a paper or a stray cup lay around. Her hazel-green eyes turned back to him. She had such a nostalgic smile on her face.

"It's been a while," she said.

"I think you've grown a bit." He waved a hand over her head. He had relaxed now and left the gun sitting on top of the empty dresser.

"Still on the short jokes, I see."

"How did you—well, what are you doing here?" He was surprised. It was nice to see her again, but it worried him. This was a dangerous time for her to be hanging around him. He didn't have what she needed from him.

"It was hard to find you. You dropped off the radar two months ago without so much as a word." Her voice was soft and her eyes pensive. They didn't betray emotions of anger or hurt, but her body did. She was unwilling to get too close to him.

"I've been busy." He couldn't give her much else. There was so much she couldn't understand.

"I've been getting that a lot lately. I see you haven't worried much." She shook her head.

"I'm sorry. How are you? There's—" he glanced around the room lost in his own foreign space—"I don't have anything to offer you."

"That's the least of our worries. Besides, you're right to not have bothered. Nothing's happened that I can't handle." She sat on the bed and ran her hands across the stitched gold leaf patterns of the hotel duvet cover. It took only a few seconds, and her presence seemed to take over the room.

"I suppose you've heard," she said. "Oracle's back."

"How do you know about that?" There was something coy in Ella, whom he had always perceived as mischievous and untamed, but still naïve in her own way. She was the rebel girl—the mouthy teenager—but still brand new and untainted. So much had changed in only a few months.

"I may be younger than you, but I'm still smarter. It's why I'm here. Why I went through hell to find you." She wanted to communicate she was displeased. She didn't care what he did anymore. She was here on business. She pulled out an envelope from her jean pocket. It was folded into fours. She handed it to him knowing how much he hated messy envelopes and messy messengers.

He opened it up. He did not recognize the cursive writing.

"It's from Julia. She told me to wait to give this to you until it was the right time."

"The right time?"

"Until Faye was ready to move on."

"Who?"

"You'll find everything you need to know in there I'm sure. You were the only one Julia really trusted." Bitterness filled those last words.

"I wouldn't say that." He defended himself.

"Watch after Faye, will you? She's all we've got left."

"So Faye is the one that's—"

"She's the one that Julia chose."

---

When people gaze into the mirror, they want to believe that it is an objective view, that this is all there is to them, like seeing the earth from high above, right where the moon used to be. The planet seems so blue, so grand, and we see its imperfections carved out clearly on its surface. But the truth is that just like we can only perceive the earth one hemisphere at a time, we can never see all of our body simultaneously if we tried. We pick the parts: right side or left, front or back, up or down. We can't possibly take in every blemish and mark at once, but nonetheless, we have a sense of the whole, though it is still our minds putting it together subjectively.

Faye's reflection doesn't lie. It tells her: I'm not a whole person. Unlike most of the human race, she has come to terms with it. She doesn't need that second mirror to check how her hair hangs from the back. She has let that presumptuousness go. She is at peace with ignorance.

But today, she did not try at all to see herself in the mirror. Instead, she visualized Julia in her features. Using the right tint of foundation, the right powder, the dark mascara and the perfect lipstick, she gave herself a new face. She was not worried about the color of her eyes—her sunglasses would be hiding them. She only cared that her face molded itself into a thin oval shape.

She walked over to the bed where her white business suit lay along with a cardboard box with that note still taped on top. She read it again: _I think you will be pleased. I could have practically scalped her._ She took the top off the box and handled the wig carefully. The strands of hair were perfectly human. The note was right—there was an eerie accuracy to this guy's work. He had replicated the color, the swooping waves at the tips, the exact layered cut. He had brought a piece of Julia back to life.

There was a moment of exhilaration when Faye put on the wig. She combed it carefully in place and stared at the mirror for a long time. Her eyes ached and stung. She couldn't bear looking at herself, but she had no choice. This was part of the game. So she put on the sunglasses and took a deep breath. She let go of Faye and Julia, and became Oracle. She had only an hour to kill her next hire. It had come at a time when she had nearly given up on finding Vicious. The job required the death of two people, double the sum. But what was more interesting was the person behind the kill—the head of a European syndicate, Peter, who wanted to frame the returning leader of the Red Dragons. Sink them underneath the water before they even surface.

---

Mary was a woman with many prospects. None of them resulted from one single quality, except that she was plausibly the cleverest of women alive. She had risen from nothing. She had grown up in dust and been reared in it. But even the smartest of people don't get anywhere simply on their abilities: luck must be on their side. Luck favored Mary. It had endowed her parents with the right combination of genes that molded her into a long, lean blonde, missing her bottom ribs on each side, so that her body had the perfect curvy shape. Her face was also rather beautiful but an ordinary type of beauty. It didn't overpower, and she kept her body hidden until it was time to unveil and use it. Mary, in her cleverness and with the power of her body, had climbed weathered stairs up to a higher ground that didn't get flooded during torrential rains or broken mains.

Mary also had charismatic speech. She was the master negotiator, ruthless and relentless. She could bargain herself out of death and others into it. The right words coiled around her tongue and slithered out at her command at any, even inopportune, moment. No one could deconstruct her arguments. Her logic was superior, and she exercised it constantly by studying works embellished with rhetoric, like Shakespeare, Aurelius, and Mill. She believed in a specific form of democracy, controlled centrally by a powerful group, and she defended this politic to the death.

Above all, Mary knew how to balance her power. She could please and undo a battle as easy as she had disagreed and displeased. She was nearly unstoppable.

But, like all powerful people, Mary had a temper and an authoritative drive. The more she gained, the more she sought to control. The more she saw, the more she sought to know. She had grown too fast, too quick. She would sever loyalties as fast she could make them, and this created an instability that would lead to her death.

The only person in this world that learned to love her unconditionally was John. He called himself her brother, though they had no blood ties and hadn't known each other as children. He was family enough, and they treated one another as such.

When Mary gazed in the mirror unknowingly for the last time, she saw all her prospects laid out before her. She saw in her light brown eyes the power she would wield in the future. In her brow, she saw an empire constructed, which would climb the fleshy steps of her wrinkles as they formed. She had little vanity, because there was no room for it. Only hunger for the chance to want forever and without limit. Despite all she planned to accomplish on this day, she had a strange feeling lingering inside of her. She hadn't been able to eat breakfast, and right then, in front of this hall mirror, she glanced down at the only token of her past she had kept with her. On her right middle finger, she wore her mother's old wedding ring. She rubbed its glossy silver surface and heaviness settled on her chest. There was a breath of uncertainty that filled her, but Mary would not entertain such thoughts. Those were for the weak, and fortune favored only the brave and strong.

"We will have our men surrounding the building," John said, and she turned away from the mirror towards the man emerging from the living room area of the hotel suite.

"You worry too much. I can take care of myself," Mary retorted. She took one last glance at her reflection and adjusted the silver cross hanging down to her chest.

"I still don't think you should be doing this alone."

"John, don't worry. I know these types of men. He needs us, and he knows it, otherwise he wouldn't have accepted."

"I don't know, Mary. He nearly destroyed an empire in one night."

"Didn't you hear the rumors? A woman did that."

"That doesn't comfort me in the least." John looked at her gravely, and Mary simply laughed.

"I know what I'm doing."

"And Oracle? He's surfaced again. He has always been a favorite of the Red Dragons."

"The _old_ Red Dragons."

"Alexis, I'm serious." He hadn't used her real name in years. He was more than worried. He looked absolutely petrified. "You're too young for this. I don't know what Peter was thinking by sending you."

"It took Peter years to allow me to be—"

"You have nothing to prove."

"Only a man would say that." She smiled and touched his face. She kissed him with tender maternal affection on the cheek. At that moment, the others entered. John wouldn't let her roam Red Dragon territory without an escort at least.

The elevator ride down gave Mary one last chance to look at herself, but it was a distorted version of her body. She couldn't quite make out her face or the faces of any of the men around her in the lacquered metal. Despite that, she could clearly see the ring on her finger glistening from the recess lights on the ceiling. She could also make out the simple cross pressed against her skin. Actually, it was the cross that she had focused on before the elevator stopped at the eighth floor and gunshots rang all around her. Standing before her was a blonde as tall Mary, in a white suit and her eyes hidden behind dark glasses. Mary could not see the woman's expression. She couldn't tell what this woman was thinking as she murdered them all, but her lips were blood red. Then again, maybe it was death distorting her sight.

---

Chapter inspired by Joyce Neimanas' _Face Lift_, 1993.


	11. Chapter 9: Storyline I

It's been a while. I've missed writing probably a lot more than anyone has missed this story. I have drafts and I just need to get through him. It's a hard process with my job and all. I've realized that I'm writing this more for myself than anyone which eases the pressure and guilt I feel when I don't post in ages. Hopefully, when it's finished people will reconsider reading this story, but until then I don't blame anyone for not putting up with my lack of updates. As always, thanks for checking it out. It's lovely to be read even if it is a selfish process.

**Heroes Don't Exist**

Chapter 9: _Storyline I  
_

Her image is frozen on the screen. He gazes so intently that she blurs out of focus until she becomes pixels of arbitrary colors and then black and white snow. Although the lens trapped her temporarily in time, every twitch of each pixel is like the movements of millions of microorganisms—cells upon cells—keeping her alive through this collapse in space and time. He feels his mortality crawling on his skin.

"This is it." He means it as a question, but his authoritative mouth translates it into a statement. The simple acknowledgement scares him at first. He has somehow finished the incantation and she is fully alive again.

"Yes sir." Nicolas's sudden affirmation startles him, but he is a rock and does not show it.

"Where is she now?"

"Waiting."

"Tell them to hold. I'll escort her myself." It unsettles Nicolas, his human shield, that he should change the plans so suddenly, but he knows better than to protest. He is a military man, and he follows orders regardless. It is the kind of man Vicious hates, but Nicolas has his uses.

"Don't lose that image," Vicious says as though Nicolas were in charge of it, but his lackey makes a mental note. He will speak to security about it.

As they walk out of his office, Vicious holds the hilt of his sword possessively, ready for any other surprises that might spring on him unsuspectingly. He does not trust Nicolas, or anyone else, to protect his life, but it eases the rest of the syndicate. The construction is new and weak, and Vicious must reinforce it even through unnecessary means. They must feel secure that their head is protected even as immortal as he may seem to them. After all, God has his archangels.

As they enter the elevator, Vicious thinks back to the frozen picture and her face staring directly into the lens. Her hair is exactly the same as he remembers it. The door slides shut and Vicious can see his reflection in the glossy metal surface. He does not look exactly the same as a year ago. His hair is still growing into its original cut. His face is cleaner. The faded scars of years ago are all gone.

"Do you believe in ghosts?" Vicious asks.

"Sir?" Nicolas wants to understand how to answer this question, but Vicious is not even looking at him. There are no reactions or emotions to gage an appropriate response from or to even study for extraneous inferences. Vicious' face is blank as though the voice that spoke had been disembodied.

"No, sir," he finally says. "Ghosts are pictures of our memories. If ghosts existed, after the Gate Incident we would see nothing but spirits." Nicolas is a philosopher. He has tried to show off his depth of thinking before, but in Vicious' mind, he has failed to make an important distinction between ghosts and spirits. He has blindly treated them like synonyms. If Nicolas, for all his philosophical capacity, would indeed understand what Vicious meant, then Vicious would have turned to him and said, You see that was not Mary but a ghost come back to visit. But there is no use in wasting his breath on a man who knows little about metaphysics. Instead Vicious spend his time in the elevator imagining the frozen Julia-Mary and comparing her with the Oracle-Julia of the night she managed to kill him. Ever since that night, he only dreams in black and white. The coma has somehow short-circuited his brain's ability to see color in his memories as well. He did try to apply a kind of Technicolor technique to them. He would attempt with all his might to brush each image with familiar hues, but it was fruitless. He could taste Julia's red lipstick and feel her warm blood rushing through his fingers, but he could not see them. They were shades of grey.

He remembers the first time he saw her more than seven months on a similar security screen. Seven months is too short a time. It was really an eternity he had spent paying for their sins. She came alive back then too, just like that. She delivered an enveloped to the information desk downstairs. It might never have gotten him had she not said, It's from his wife. In it, there was nothing but her small wedding band with his name on it—Vincent—a dead name.

A week later she penetrated through the darkness into the building. He searched the city looking to kill her and then Spike. He wanted—rather needed—Spike to lose her first. Only then would Spike stop hiding and come to face him like the man he had once been. But Oracle came—ready to avenge—with a useless sword in hand. It was so dark, and she couldn't tell how much it angered him to fight her, but she would not relent. She deserved the sword through her stomach, and when it happened, he imagined her look of disbelief. But his eyes adjusted to the dark and he was disappointed. She didn't look at all surprised. She was resigned to this fate, to his hands covered in blood. I could not save us, she whispered to him. He stepped back, away from that witch, away from the adrenaline possessing him. That was when the bombs went off and then his memory fails. Now the terrorist is back to blow it all up again just to save Spike, always to save Spike.

---

It is one of those days when it feels so strange to walk through the streets so belly-full of people. Alba is always brimming with business suits power-walking, couples holding hands barnacled to each other like clams, old people walking slowly and forcing the rest to go around them, teenagers in their skateboards nearly crashing into you, and bikers with that sense of invisibility that allows them to plunge into the aggressive traffic. The tall buildings and the thousand feet all around him make him feel claustrophobic. He finds himself wandering the streets less and less, as familiar as they used to be to him, because it chokes him. The air so thick with people's breaths mixed with exhaust chokes him. The cleanest air of the solar system—Alba boasts. He doesn't believe a word of it. But what he hates most about swimming through the crowd is that when his communicator goes off, he can hardly tell where it is coming from. Today he forgets to pat around his pants and jacket because he thinks he's left it at home, but when the beeping persists around him and people begin to stare, he knows it has to be his.

"Spike, where are you?" Shin greets him in a gruff tone.

"Out. What is it?"

"Oracle has killed Mary of the Apostles. That's how she's going to get in to see him. Apparently, Mary had a meeting arranged. Spike, are you listening?"

He is listening and he isn't. It is impossible to hear and comprehend when your thoughts travel a thousand miles a minute.

"Yes, when's this meeting supposed to be?"

"Now. Spike, we have to stop her."

"I'm close by. I'm going." Shin tells him about a storage space a block down where he could get ammo. Spike decides against it. He has his Jericho and two back-ups on him. He was ready when he left home to fight. He has been waiting for it. He runs toward Dragon district—his mind permeated with the memories of Julia, and above all, his ears ringing with the name _Vicious_.

---

The elevator stops on the 25th floor for a few seconds, which to Faye are like decades. But then again, she has lost the concept of time long ago. They made her wait before this in a plain white room reminiscent of a doctor's office, like she was waiting for a dentist appointment. But her logic did not let these banal attachments to normality govern her. The walls are too thick with Julia's memory. They dye the white back to red. Every corner Faye turns, she can sense Julia's presence. While she waited in the white room, she wondered if Julia had used the stairs, if it had been completely dark.

In the elevator, Faye suppresses her imagination. Her skin tingles with anxiety and in order to calm herself, she runs through her plan many times. She touches her gold bracelet pensively, begging Ed to have come through for her, because if not, she will die today. She is well acquainted with that possibility, but her efforts can't all be in vain. She has something to accomplish first. Her escort exits the elevator once it opens but holds out a hand at her instructing her to remain there. He stands by the doors with one hand pressed firmly against the frame and the other against his ear. He nods his head and that is when Faye sees her plan undone before her eyes.

Vicious stands in front of her in his prim black suit and the sword hanging from his belt. There is familiarity in the panic that ripples inside her, but her face reveals nothing.

"I will take it from here," he says to his men. They nod again. He walks into the elevator with her. He nears her until their shoulders are touching, but she does not move away. She will not let him intimidate her.

"Either you've cloned yourself or you've finally learned something from me," he says to her. Faye can see no hint of a smile of his lips. Faye knows for a fact that the wig and her makeup in such close proximity can't fool him, but the last thing she expected was a joke. He presses the button for the tenth floor. She is worried now. She doesn't understand what is going on, and she feels unprepared.

"How many times do I have to kill you, Oracle?"

"I could ask the same about you."

Vicious turns toward her when they arrive at the tenth floor. He pulls the emergency stop and smiles, or at least she believes that's what it is. His pale hazel eyes stare intently past her sunglasses. His hands move to the blonde hair that grows heavier with each second.

"You did well," he whispers. "It even feels just like hers." Faye wants to push him away, but she is too busy trying to keep her muscles still and avoid the urge to tremble. His hand grazes her cheek. It is surprisingly warm and soft.

"Your features are too different though. Gentler, prettier."

"Are you trying to seduce me too?" She forces herself to smirk.

"Have you come to kill me?" Her smirk grows into a grin.

"I'm not naïve," she responds. Suddenly, his hands are at her neck, squeezing it with all their strength.

"Do you think you could distract me while he comes here? Don't you ever realize that partnering with him was the worst choice you ever made?" He lets go and then, "I see. You have no idea what I'm talking about. Well then, let's go meet an old friend, shall we?"

As Faye gasps for her life, it hits her: Spike Spiegel.

---

Spike walks in and no one stops him. He thinks for a moment about what he will do. He knows that Vicious will be at the top, waiting, in the same room where the Van used to be. He has rebuilt the building exactly the same. That is how Vicious would want it. He was always full of grandiose illusions. Spike bypasses the row of elevators and begins running up the stairs, gun in hand. As he turns to climb toward the landing of the tenth floor, he stops suddenly. He nearly drops his gun. His mouth makes an involuntary whimpering noise.

"Julia?"

On each side, she has man in a suit. She purses her lips, and Spike knows then it isn't her. She is different. What kind of twisted joke is this? He points the gun at her. He hears steps coming down, and then Vicious stands next to the doppelganger.

"Is that how you greet old friends?"

"Vicious."

"Who is she?" Vicious asks Spike. Spike steps back startled by his question.

"He doesn't know me," Oracle says in a hoarse tone, but Spike recognizes her voice. Vicious turns around and with the hilt of his sword he hits her in the shoulder, slamming her against the wall. He draws the blade against her throat. Spike wants to scream at him to stop though he doesn't know why. She is not Julia.

"I can't die, Vicious," she says between gasps. "No matter how many times you kill me, I cannot die." She hisses. Spike's anger rises in him. She is actually suicidal.

"I know you better than you think, Vincent. Don't you see…" She leans in with the strength left in her and whispers something into his ear. Vicious draws the sword away from her. He is shocked. Faye makes a quick movement to her wrist. Vicious does not move, but the men have their guns aimed at her, and now there are men behind Spike. The lights suddenly go off all over the building and the staircase is blindingly black. There are gunshots and scuffling. Spike busies himself with the men behind him. He hears the clink of the sword and then a woman's grunt. He hears her coming towards him. He doesn't shoot. He waits until hair grazes his face. Her hand grabs him. This way, it urges. He follows her, almost tripping every few steps, but she confidently runs down the stairs, past doors, down another set of stairs. The glasses, he thinks. The lights are her doing.

The lights come back on as they exit out the loading dock. She lets him go and keeps running a few blocks past. She dives into an alley, breathing hard, and rips off the wig and throws it on the ground. She starts frantically pulling out safety pins and then finally ridding herself of the nylon cap covering most of her hair. In her frenzied movements, she fails to notice Spike still with her.

"What the hell are you doing here?" It pains her to speak. Her neck is bright red.

"What did you say to Vicious?" It is the one full sentence he has at his disposal. The only one that lingers through all the chaos.

"What? How—do you know what you just did? Do you know what _I_ just did? I just saved your fucking life."

"Did you really think you could kill him?" He is tired of her and her facetious manner. She laughs, but her eyes still seethe with anger.

"Kill him? Don't be stupid. I never planned to kill him."

He doesn't understand what she means at all, but he is somehow afraid to ask. In her face, her anger subsides replaced by coy confidence. She moves only inches from his face and then leans into his ear.

"I don't want to kill him, Spike. I want to destroy him." He recognizes something in her expression but can't decipher it.

"He's going to hunt you down."

"Me? Oh, he has no idea who I am. It's you who should be worried. I won't be there to save you a second time." She begins to walk away. He thinks of shooting her for a moment, maybe hurting her in some way, but he sees her reach toward her shoulder and limp a bit before she adjusts herself again. Her white suit is still flawless under the dim dusk light.

He stands there in the alleyway for a while. He glances down at the blonde wig on the ground. It lays dead there, as though Julia has dematerialized and all that is left is this. He bends down to touch it but stops himself as his fingertips reach it. He gets up and turns away. He leaves it there wondering if it will get black with the midnight rain.

---

Chapter inspired by Robert Rauschenberg's Storyline I, 1968


	12. Chapter 10: Gravity of Light

I've worked at this chapter for about two months now. It has been impossible to let go, mainly because after this, we move on to part II of Heroes. I wanted it to be perfect, but that's next to impossible at this point. It might ease confusion if you re-read the prologue since this chapter follows it chronologically. It might make more sense that way. I'm going to clear up a few things ahead of time. There are two Vincents in this story: Vincent from Faye's past (i.e. Vincent Volaju), and Vicious, whose real name is also Vincent. Second, Ella is the girl that helped Julia with Faye when they first met (chapter 3: The Enigma of the Hour). Third, the picture Spike refers to in this chapter is from Chapter 2: Morgan. Lastly, this chapter makes a lot of references to the short story that started this endless project--basically, back to the days when Faye was trapped at that military facility after having woken from cryogenic sleep in 2068.

I hope that clears up a bit of the confusion that's about to ensue. Thanks for your patience, and thank you to those who continue to stick with me and review.

**Heroes Don't Exist**

**Chapter 10**: _Gravity of Light_

_Thick blood courses in her stained hands. Long, thin fingers stretch out and reach toward the waves of light. Moths with golden dust on their wings swarm the space around her and swallow the oxygen. There are streams of red and white. At first, it is just one fluttering despondently as her limbs shake violently, then another appears and then there are millions of wings everywhere. They swirl around until she feels as though there is no ground beneath her feet. Gravity pushes down on her palms, but when she glances down at her hands again, there is nothing but empty weight. This is what hell is like._

Vincent? She moaned out his name. She couldn't see him through all the blood. She couldn't hear any breathing or gasping because her heart was inside her head, expanding and floating there.

What have I done?

She touched his face. Even then, as she held him tightly and desperately, she blamed him. If he had truly loved her, then he would have let her go. If she had truly loved him—

Faye! The door burst open. She pulled his body closer to her with a sense of morbid ownership.

What are you doing? Mendelo shouted. He stared at her as if she were a bewildered and dangerous animal.

I've killed him, she thought but wasn't sure she said it. Mendelo kneeled down, and put an ear to Vincent's face and a hand on his neck. Mendelo's dark eyes revealed nothing. He stood up and looked right past her. He closed his eyes for a few seconds and then met Faye's eyes with resignation. Vincent was dead.

We have to go, Mendelo told her and attempted to pull her up, but her bloody arm slipped through his grip.

I can't—I don't know, she stammered. She let Vincent go. She felt his blood rising in her throat. Even without touching it, she was bound to his body.

They'll find you, and you'll end up dead too. Let's go, he said in a slow, demanding tone.

I didn't want this. I don't know why—how could I do this? I loved him, she whispered. Mendelo glanced at the body for a few seconds and then back at her.

I believe you, Mendelo said gently, and mustered the strength to pull her up by both arms this time.

She heaved out a last mournful cry and turned away from Vincent. Mendelo got her a towel from the bathroom to wipe the heavy red from her arms. As they made their escape, it was Mendelo that dragged her through the halls. Her limbs would turn stiff or her legs would give out. Her arms became so unbearable that she felt they were ripping at the shoulder joints. Those five minutes—that whole week—became a daze, like one of those distant _memory-dreams_. But every so often, the whole scene would rise out the depths like a primordial beast, and his death would permeate her mind for days and nights at a time.

She honestly thought that Vincent would agree to come with her. She never imagined that he would cling to his blank past so blindingly. He was a general's son so distinguished and powerless at the same time. Vincent loved her, and she thought that maybe, just maybe, it was enough love to leave that place behind. But loving too hard never translated into selflessness. There were sacrifices that even love couldn't excuse.

Why are you talking like this suddenly? Vincent asked her.

I'm exhausted, Vincent. Don't you get tired of this isolation? This life? You're a prisoner just like me, she said.

This is only temporary, he said and held her. We'll figure something out. Besides, this isn't so bad.

Yes, it is. Her body was stiff in his arms. He let go, suddenly repelled by her. He shook his head.

What do you want from me? Anger glistened in his eyes.

Don't judge me. You know this isn't a contest of who loves whom, she said trying to reason with him.

We're done with this conversation. You'll get us killed.

She glared at him as he walked away. She brought her hands to her face to stop from reaching toward him or running after him. He had made his choice, and she had just made hers. Dr. Mendelo Al-Hedia was ready and willing to help her. She had to do this because she couldn't stay one more day. Mendelo had known all along that it would happen this way. The doctor had prepared for it with enough sedatives to spike Vincent's bottle of gin. Every night, he would take a drink in order to go to sleep. That night, she had to make sure he wouldn't wake up. But she should have been smarter. It was Vincent, after all, who taught her how to be cautious, how to defend herself, and how to trust no one. He must have suspected. Faye didn't realize he had thrown the gin away, not until it was too late.

When she rose from bed, she felt his large fingers on her arm like grappling hooks. She gasped but luckily her other hand had already reached the gun she had taped under the bed. Still, she didn't move for a whole minute to give him a chance to back out.

What are you doing, he asked softly as though barely woken from a deep sleep.

I'm leaving.

No, you're not, he uttered.

Let me go, she whispered. They were both frozen in their positions.

You can't, he said, voice breaking at the seams. She took one deep breath and pulled her hand from underneath the bed. She aimed the Glock at his head. He was so startled that in that instant, he released her arm and propelled out of bed. She did the same but still holding her arm steady in the darkness.

Where did you get a weapon? He was truly surprised. He had violated his own rules about trust, believing he could persuade Faye into staying.

There's a lot you don't know, she answered. There's a lot you never asked. Her eyes threatened her, but she swallowed the balled-up tears down her throat.

He moved toward the door of the room. He would stop her at all costs.

I need you, he said, meaning it to be monotonous, but it sounded like he was pleading.

I know, she whispered back. A tight pressure rose from her stomach to her chest. Her whole body trembled, all except for her hands.

You and I both know this won't happen, he said. His detachment returned.

So you've told me. Most of her emotions ebbed back into her stomach, where she could ignore them. But anger remained pumping in her heart. Her eyes drowned in resentment.

You're not capable of this, he said.

You've no idea what I'm capable of. She cocked the gun. Come with me, she demanded in a low tone. She knew the answer, and so he said nothing.

I won't be kept. I need to be free. I'm not one of those snow globes. You have not seen what I've seen, she said and new tears suddenly breached her defenses. Her arm tensed, and his eyes held terror in them, as though he had foreseen his future in hers. She never knew she would see him—stoic, laconic Vincent—scared. She couldn't have imagined it before if she tried.

She shot him three times. The silencer choked the sound. He had his arm outstretched toward her as she shot him, and when his body fell backwards, she stopped breathing. She had to do it. He wouldn't have moved. He wouldn't have let her go. She needed to be free.

She needed to breathe.

--

She was gasping. The pain in her stomach was unbearable. She could feel herself bleeding to death—liquid hot rushing out of her by the gallons. She was dying. She tried to move her arms, but the pain made her cry out louder. Her eyes could not focus. All she could make out was white. It wasn't the sky.

"Hey, hey. Don't move. Here, drink this for me. I'm sorry, but the IV ran out. You'll need to take this for the pain." Hands lifted her head and put pills in her mouth. She drank the water and gagged a little before swallowing. The disembodied voice mumbled something and then set Faye's head down again.

"It'll take a while to kick in. I'm sorry."

"What year is it?" Faye asked through clenched teeth. How many times would she have to fear the answer to such a stupid question?

The voice said nothing for a while, and then, "Twenty seventy-two."

Tears rushed out unexpectedly from relief, and then all was black again. When Faye came to, she heard the same voice again. She felt calmer now. The pain was still present but mostly as a dull soreness.

"You need to tell me what the hell is going on," the voice urged. "I'm tired of waiting. I've given you a chance to get over the shock, so who is she, Spike? What the hell happened?" Faye finally recognized her. It was Maggie. Faye's eyes hurt to open, but she took a deep breath and allowed her sight to come into focus. She was in a bedroom. All was white. An empty IV bag hung from a large nail on the wall. Streaks of sunlight escaped through the gaps of the window blinds.

"Is she in danger?" Maggie asked. "Oh God, are we?" Maggie's voice was coming from just outside the door of the room.

"You're not," Spike answered. "For now."

"Who are you people? Who the hell did this?"

"Most likely the Red Dragons."

"Who?"

"The syndicate I used to belong to," Spike's voice was as unsentimental and unapologetic as always. There was a long pause after that.

"I'm going to check on her," Maggie said in a lower tone. Faye feigned sleep. The door opened and then closed again. Faye felt the pressure of her bladder as a new pain. When she felt Maggie's hand checking her pulse, Faye opened her eyes again. Maggie jumped slightly, and then shook her head.

"You're awake," Maggie whispered. "How are you feeling?" There were stripes of golden light on her young face. It was coming from a small window. Though shut tightly, the white blinds let in the sun in streams. Maggie's lips, cheeks, and even eyelids trembled, not knowing what expression to reveal. There was no trace of compassion in her face. She checked Faye's vitals, like going through the motions, a familiar routine on an unfamiliar patient.

"I feel like hell," Faye said, feeling more sorry for Maggie than Maggie felt for her.

"It was Vicious," Spike stated as he came into the room. Faye wasn't sure whether it was a question. Maggie's face stiffened and her expression finally turned into something recognizable. She was livid.

"You could have been killed." Spike sounded strangely reprimanding.

"It's only a matter of time before Vicious comes after you," Faye responded. She didn't feel like contradicting or correcting him.

"How did he find you?" Spike asked. Faye half-laughed and half-cried at the memory of Vincent's ghastly face. That wasn't a memory she could handle quite yet.

"That's a good question," she said. "I suppose the undead have their powers."

"Is she delirious?" Spike turned to Maggie, for the first time acknowledging her presence in the room.

"I think she's being sarcastic." Maggie's hands turned to fists as she adjusted the bed sheets.

"Are you an idiot? You're lying half-battered to death on my fucking bed." Faye wasn't sure, but she thought he was scolding her.

"Don't worry, daddy, I can't die either." Faye heard some shuffling and saw that Spike almost lunged at her before Maggie intervened.

"Stop it, both of you. She's a probably a little bit out of it because of the pain meds." Maggie glared at Spike as though she might punch him herself.

"The point is that if _he_ found me, then Vicious can find you too. The longer I stay here, the more in danger we are."

"You are welcome to leave," Spike said, throwing his hands up and backing awat from Maggie.

"Enough!" Maggie hissed as Faye began getting up. It hurt like hell, but she kept it in until she felt Maggie's hands pushing her back down.

"Faye, you're in no condition to go anywhere." Maggie glanced back at Spike, who shrugged angrily and walked out. Maggie pressed her forefinger and thumb against the corner of her eyes—a recognizable attempt to hold back tears.

"Maggie, I really need to get up." Faye hated herself for asking for help.

"You can't. You know that. You can feel it." She still didn't look at Faye.

"I need to go the bathroom," Faye said. Maggie pressed her lips together and nodded.

"All right, I'll get the pan."

"Pan?" Faye whimpered. She didn't remember peeing in a pan. "I prefer the bathroom, please." Faye needed to get out of the room, out of the stark whiteness of it. Maggie nodded restlessly and offered her arm. Faye took it, and held in her cries with all her might as Maggie helped pull her body up.

The limp to the bathroom took forever, but Faye tried to distract herself by examining Maggie, who somehow reminded Faye a little of Ella. She couldn't figure out why. Maggie's red hair, pale skin, soft green eyes and her round face were such a contrast to Ella's thin, tanned face. Where Ella's movements were boyish, Maggie's were pretty and delicate. Faye didn't understand anymore how she saw a resemblance. Perhaps it was just how young they both were in comparison to Faye, who was only a few years older, but miles apart from them. Or was it decades?

Maggie was a lot more help than Faye would have liked. Faye found she couldn't bend down without her legs nearly giving out. The shocker, however, came when she looked in the mirror as she turned the faucet knobs. Faye had wondered why Maggie hadn't flipped the light switch. The bathroom window barely let in any light, but Faye could see the right half of her face purple and green and still tender at the touch of her fingers grazing the skin. She began noticing the pains she had ignored before—like moving her jaw or blinking. Her mangled face explained why it had stung when she tried to open her eyes and worse when she tried to laugh or talk. Her eyes slowly moved over the rest of the body. She scanned and noticed more bruises and scrapes. Jumping out the balcony had been more reckless than she had anticipated. She must have hit her monopod pretty damn hard— all to escape from a ghost.

"How long have I been out?" Faye asked.

"You've been in and out of consciousness for the last four days. Despite what you may look like, you heal remarkably fast." Maggie answered as Faye turned away from the mirror. "The doctor said the bullet was not too deep, but taking it out yourself was rather stupid."

"It wasn't just a bullet. He would have tracked me down with it." Faye regretted saying anything the moment it left her mouth.

"Oh." Maggie seemed disoriented for a moment.

"Why—," Faye stopped, unsure of what she wanted to ask.

"When you came four nights ago, I just heard these loud knocks, and some shuffling downstairs. I got up and came down. I thought Spike had been drinking again. The … um—the door was open, and Spike—he was just standing there in shock. I have never seen his face like that. Your body lay bleeding to death on the couch." Maggie's lips remained open in silence for nearly half a minute.

"You saved me," Faye acknowledged. Maggie didn't respond. Faye took a hold of Maggie's arm to walk back to the bedroom. Maggie didn't budge.

"What do you want with Spike?" Maggie's age was heavier on her and distorted by the shadows of the dim bathroom

"Nothing. I came to him because he was closest. I wasn't exactly in the position to go to the ER." Faye let go of Maggie's shoulder.

"You're not an ex-girlfriend, are you?" For the first time since she had woken up, Maggie met Faye's eyes.

"No. That was our mutual acquaintance."

"You knew his ex?" Maggie glared at her in disbelief. "That doesn't even matter now."

"I know. I'm sorry." Faye's head was spinning. She wanted to lie down again.

"I don't mind helping you," Maggie said, grabbing Faye's arm and draping it around her neck. Maggie's face was pale and distraught, but her eyes were determined. "I'm going to be a physical therapist someday, so this is somewhat like practice. But here's the thing, after this, you leave him. You leave and never come back here again."

"Maggie, he can't stay here either." Faye pitied her. Maggie had no idea who Spike really was. Maggie acted older, but she was still young and stupid like all the rest when it came to men.

"You just leave." Maggie and Faye walked toward the room in silence.

You can't fix him, Faye wanted to say.

He's not your problem, Maggie would have answered.

When Doc left, Spike was sitting on the couch with his head in his hands and Maggie sat in the old recliner next to him. She had been holding back tears because she knew that was not the time to break down sobbing. Spike didn't know how to react when he saw a woman crying. He would shut down and step back slowly acting like tears were toxic or a disease he did not want to catch. Maggie tried to find the courage and indifference in her. She leaned towards him. Her hand reached toward his face. He pulled back instantaneously.

"Spike, you need to tell me the truth." Her voice was calm and her face as still and expressionless as she could manage

"Not now, Maggie." The urge to cry and hit him pushed harder against her chest. The pressure was nearly unbearable.

"You need to tell me because I can't help if I don't know." She spoke very slowly, so he could hear her clearly.

"I haven't asked for your help," he muttered. She stood up suddenly, her body so surprised (though her mind had predicted it) that she had no idea what to do. Her emotions usurped any control she had left.

"You didn't ask for my help? What fuck is wrong with you!" She shouted as her whole body shook with anger and fear. He stared up at her with that same face of shock she found him with next to Faye's body. "If it weren't for me, you'd still be standing there, and she'd be dead. So screw you. I've done nothing but help you and take care of her, and you—Spike Spiegel—are an asshole. The worst kind."

"Maggie, sit down. You're shaking." His composure was back, but hers kept slipping further and further. He moved to force her to sit. The lamplight made her eyes redder and ferocious.

"Don't touch me." She backed away from him, and wrapped her arms around her trembling body. "Don't you get it? I'm scared. How come we can't take her to a hospital? Why shouldn't we? She's been talking in her sleep or whatever. She keeps saying 'I've killed him.' Who the hell is she?" Maggie couldn't even muster an educated guess.

Spike glanced toward his bedroom door.

"I'm not really sure."

--

_It hurt, like needles and knives all at once, like lightning of pain. That was all she could think of—the pain—and that moth. It was so dark, but she could see its golden wings fluttering the distance. The storm in her stomach was killing her. She tried moving the rest of her body but couldn't. She shut her eyes tightly as another cramp stifled her breath._

"_Faye." A male voice called to her—the pain began to numb down. "Faye," it said again and the pain returned. "Did you really think you would get rid of me?"_

_Vincent, her thoughts whimpered and then quickly returned to the horrible ache in her abdomen._

"_Ghosts are more alive than those living, and you, you're nothing but a murderer."_

_It's a dream. Faye pleaded with her mind. Vincent couldn't be there. He hadn't found her. She had opened her eyes, and she had escaped. She had taken out the tracer. She had made it to Spike's apartment. Wake up! she shouted._

--

"Should you be doing that already?" Spike asked though his tone showed no genuine concern. Faye continued getting dressed slowly. Her pants were almost all the way up. She had gotten some loose shorts and a shirt and sweater from Maggie. Faye was finally glad to get out of the oversized shirt and boxer shorts, which no doubt belonged to Spike.

"Why didn't you ask Maggie to help you?"

Faye didn't respond. He had no qualms about staring at her as she put her clothes on. Then again, she was the furthest from being attractive at that moment. After she was finished with her daunting task, she finally spoke.

"The longer I stay here, the worse it is. You know how it works."

"How did Vicious find you? How could you have been so careless?" He lit a cigarette, but his eyes still glared. His mind was filled with anger, screaming at her: you're Oracle for god's sake!

He was so much like Vicious sometimes. His voice, body, and eyes said nothing of his emotions. But maybe it was actually the total opposite. Maybe it was all his emotions all at once rendering them undistinguishable from each other.

"Who the hell said it was Vicious that was after me?"

Spike's façade dropped from his face. He stared at her wide-eyed. He hadn't entertained that possibility yet. Faye laughed but stopped as soon as the pain worsened.

"Let's just say we both have very angry ex-boyfriends." She stood up and looked around for her bracelet. She finally found it in the bathroom. As she exited, she felt a hand grab her by the collar of her sweatshirt and then she was up against the wall, wincing in pain.

"You almost died," Spike said. Emotions whirled around her. She looked into his eyes and noticed the golden flecks of light in his right iris in contrast with the monotone brown of his left one. She searched in his right eye for some idea of what he was thinking. She thought it ironic. He should be the one to talk—always wanting to die, always ending up in bandages. Images and sounds suddenly flooded her—an orange, an ace, soft humming—her head hurt. She groaned and brought a hand up to her forehead. She couldn't quite pull the memory out.

"Don't confuse me with you," she said impulsively. "I'm not the one with a death wish." Her eyes met his again. He had a confounded expression but released her nonetheless.

"We've got to get off Mars for a while." He shook her emotions off him.

"I know. You need to erase that you were here for Maggie's sake."

"Don't act like you know her." They broke their glares. Silence filled the hall.

"Dock 13. There's a ship called the Bebop. It sets sail tonight."

It wasn't shock that Faye felt at first. It was resentment. Faye resented the fact she knew where that phrase came from. She could see white sails bowed out on one side by the force of the wind and the open sea, blue all around, and the sun reflecting against waves pulled by the silent force of a hidden moon.

"What? Why?" she finally asked in disbelief. He was sincerely offering help. He shook his head again, visibly frustrated.

"This is why I hate kids, animals, and tomboys."

His words brought unexpected tears to her throat.

"Come or don't for all I care. The choice is yours."

"Tell Maggie, I'm sorry, and tell her goodbye for me." Faye grabbed the small bag Maggie had prepared for her with painkillers and bandages and left without telling him whether she would come. But both knew that she had nowhere else to go.

--

"You can't," she said. She sucked in some breath to keep from sobbing.

"I have to. Look at it, Mag. Look at the picture. It looks just like her." Spike handed the picture to Maggie again. Maggie refused to take it.

"But it's not her. You said so yourself. It's older than you and me combined. It's impossible." Her voice was already breaking.

"I have it for a reason." He stuffed it back into his inner jacket pocket. He had grown strangely attached to it. It had become his totem, and it would help him bring Julia back to life.

"Let her go. You don't even know her."

"That may be true, but she's right. I can't stay here. It's over. I should have never even been here."

"You're an idiot."

"I know you think that."

"I fucking hate you."

"Make sure you do what I told you." He walked out of his half-empty apartment. He had never liked it anyway. It always stunk of some kind of musty smell he could never put his finger on.

"She's not Julia," Maggie said suddenly. His instincts took over, and he whipped around and grabbed her by the shoulders.

"What the hell did you say?" He shook her violently. Maggie let out some sobs.

"I didn't say anything! I don't know what you're talking about." Her eyes were swollen with tears and her lips were trembling convulsively. He let go of her. She fell to her knees sobbing. He didn't say anything. He turned around. Maggie never saw him again.

--

Jet Black ate the last of his soba noodles with contempt. He was leaving. He'd grown tired of waiting around for that freeloader because, for all he knew, Vicious had killed him and now Spike was dead. But it just pissed him off that Spike was so careless. Jet had enough. He was leaving this time for sure.

He got up from the galley and went to the common room to check on his communicator one last time. He had waited for that asshole to call for one whole week. It had become routine that he would check for messages at least five times a day. And he wasn't surprised that this last time, there was nothing still. Spike Spiegel took everything for granted. Jet grunted. Ein gave one small yelp.

"I know, Ein. It's goddamn hopeless." This kind of stress had made him crazy. He was talking to the dog for god's sakes—Spike's dog no less.

When he reached the entrance of the common room, he knew right away something was off. Ein had vanished behind him, and on the table sat a small bonsai tree. He had never seen this one before. He turned around and faced the hallway toward the hangar's direction.

"So what do you think?"

"Jesus," Jet uttered as he faced a body full of bruises and bandages. What had happened? It was just too damn awful to even contemplate. Vicious—he was the bane of everybody's existence. "You look like shit." It was all he could say.

"Well, you sure know how to compliment a girl." She came toward him with Ein trailing behind her. She sat down slowly while biting her lip to withstand the pain.

"Be thankful you don't earn your keep as a guard dog," Jet said to Ein as the dog settled next to Faye. She paid no attention to the animal.

"I saw it in the hangar, by the way." She smiled. "You found the _Red Tail_."

"You got expensive taste." He sat down on the chair next to her and lit a cigarette. He offered one, but she declined.

"Don't tell me you bought it," she said. Jet only grumbled.

"Just tell me how much."

"If only all of us were as rich as…" he kept grumbling under his breath. She laughed realizing how much she had missed him. She closed her eyes for a moment and let her head roll back into the seat. The sensation of relief swept her in one tingling wave.

"So what happened?" he finally asked.

"I failed." She didn't move.

"That's obvious."

"Spike got in the way." She opened her eyes and stared at the pipes on the ceiling. "Don't worry. He's fine. I'm the one who got banged up."

Jet didn't say anything for a while. Then he got up and picked up his bonsai.

"If you send me another one, I'll finally run out of room." He walked behind the couch, and bent his head down at her. She saw his worried and angry face, but she couldn't help it. She smiled at him.

"I think you'll have to make do with what you have for a while now. He's coming, Jet."

"I didn't ask. I don't care really." He was lying, and they both knew it.

"He asked me to come with him," she said. She sat up to catch Jet's reaction.

"He what?"

"Don't look at me. I'm just as confused as you are. Speaking of the devil," she said as she heard footsteps.

"I hate how you can do that," Jet said.

"You came," Spike said as soon as he saw her.

"You are both lucky that I was even around this long." Jet huffed and nearly crushed his bonsai pot. He left the room immediately. Spike stared after Jet and then turned back to Faye.

"You knew him already?" Spike said. He was indignant, and Faye loved every minute of it.

"It's how I tracked you down."

Spike picked up Jet's box of cigarettes and lit one up. He glanced at Faye from the corner of his eye, and then leaned back. His eyes focused on the ceiling. The fluorescent lights shone brighter in his left eye.

"How much does Jet know about you?" Spike asked.

"He doesn't know I'm Oracle, if that's what you're asking. He's not going to find out. He just thinks I'm an old friend of Julia's, which I am."

"So you're the bonsai freak, the one who's been sending him those trees forever." He paused and after a few drags, he said, "I don't get it. Who the hell are you?"

"If I told you, I'd ruin all the fun."

"We're leaving," Jet said as he entered the commons again on his way to the bridge. He stopped behind Faye for a moment and put his hand on her shoulder.

"Next time," he said.

"Yeah, next time," she replied and she glanced at Spike. Her eyes tried to tell him something, but he didn't understand. Jet wouldn't tell him either. Jet wouldn't talk to Spike for another week until he cooled down. But that didn't worry Spike. The main problem now was that he didn't know what kind of threat Jet had brought on his ship.

Keep your enemies close, he told himself as the Bebop set sail for Jupiter.

--

Chapter inspired by Doug and Mike Starn's artwork. Check it out at starnstudio dot com (_Gravity of Light_ and _Attraction to Light_)


	13. Chapter 11: UnInhabited Prairie

**PART II: ORACLE**

* * *

"_If it is death only through that I do live_

_If it is solitude I speak in serving it_

_It is memory and I remember nothing_

_I do not know what it says and I trust myself to it_

_How to know oneself living_

_How to forget one's knowing_

_Time that half-opens the eyelids_

_and sees us, letting itself be seen."_

_ -Octavio Paz_

* * *

**Chapter 11**: (Un)_Inhabited Prairie_

Nothing made any sense. He was barely awake and still bathed in the sour waters of Acheron. His body rocked back and forth while both his hands held firmly to the sides of the old fishing boat. The young Indian man sitting at the end of it regarded Vincent with some displeasure, but he took the oar and began rowing again.

"It's cold." Vincent wore nothing but a white cotton shirt.

"You're wet. It is to be expected. You will warm up at the third vein, Phlegethon, but it is the Styx that is the coldest."

"I don't believe in God," Vincent rebuffed suddenly though no argument had been made.

"These aren't God's veins. They are yours." The Indian man faced forward as he said this. His long dark hair moved softly with the breeze. Vincent looked down to the dark waters. His could not see any reflections: not of him, or the boat, or the Indian. Streaks of white began to course through the river, surrounding the boat, until it all became as white as milk. In the distance, Vincent heard echoes of old songs. Androgynous voices moaned out melodies that were incomprehensible. It only got colder.

"How much longer?" Vincent asked, though he was completely unaware of their destination. The Indian muttered something in a language Vincent did not understand. Then the hot burst of wind finally came and hit his face with marvelous force. A red glow engulfed them as they traversed through a river of lava. The boat's floorboards glowed bright orange and Vincent had to pull up his feet. The fishing boat came to a sudden stop, and Vincent saw the Indian jump off. He stood on solid black rock.

"Help pull it up," the Indian said. Vincent stood up on the seat and jumped to the other and then off on the shore. When he touched the hull of the boat, it was too hot to bear. The Indian scoffed.

"Pain does not exist here. Now, pull." Vincent grabbed the edge of the hull again and withstood the burn until the boat was out of the lava.

"To the other side. Careful, don't touch the water, or else you will forget who you are again."

Vincent and the Indian pushed the boat a few yards until they could see the white waves rising on the black rock.

"Push and then hurry and get on. Remember—"

"Don't touch the water, I know."

They pushed and the Indian with one swift jump entered the boat and grabbed the oar. Vincent had to stumble on from the back to keep away from contact with the water. He smacked his knee against the beam.

"Damn it," he muttered. The Indian glared at him.

"Don't speak. You will forget that too."

As they traversed through another white river, the air became cold again, but much colder than before. Vincent, though completely dry, couldn't help but shiver. He stared at the Indian's suede pants and his tall moccasins. Vincent closed his eyes and thought of the lava.

"Wake up," the Indian said. Vincent didn't know he had fallen asleep. He felt cold flecks landing on his skin. It was snowing. "The Styx—the Arctic vein," the Indian added.

"Stand up." Vincent did as he was told. His knee was still sore, and his feet were numb.

"This is where you get off. Here you will die or you will wake." The Indian pressed his large hand against Vincent's chest and pushed him off the boat.

In that split second, he thought the simple contact with the water would kill him, but he felt nothing. His body sank though he felt weightless, and even in the pitch-blackness of the river, he could see white flecks floating all around him. He reached out to grab one. When he examined it, he discovered something like a white petal. And with it in his hand, he woke up.

The room, its walls, the doors, even the drapes were as white as the petal. He pulled up his hand once he mustered enough control of his limbs. It was balled up in a fist, but when he opened it, he found it empty. When the doctors and the other soldiers came, there were so many questions. His father was nowhere to be seen, but the questions kept coming. He didn't know how to answer them. Let me go home, he said. They weren't satisfied. The doctors couldn't detect any head trauma or mental instability, but he wasn't providing the responses needed.

They finally let him go. When he entered the apartment, he noticed they had changed the carpet. Not just in the room where it got stained with his blood but everywhere. It was gray and rough to the touch.

You're late, Faye's voice echoed around him. Bewilderment warped the lines of his face as he looked up. He saw nothing. The couch was empty: the kitchen, empty; the room, empty; the bed, empty. He rushed to the bathroom and pulled open the curtains. He ripped them off in a burst of rage and threw them into the bathtub. He went back into the kitchen and opened the special cupboard filled with snow globes of all sizes: souvenirs, rare finds, antiques, collectibles. He yanked the middle shelf out and watched them as the glass bubbles collided and burst. With his hands, he raked out the rest of them. He threw each survivor against the walls. Glass shards mixed with plastic flakes until there was only one left. It was utterly indestructible. It was the cheapest and the first one he gave to Faye, back when she wasn't allowed to have anything that she could use as a weapon. The glycol liquid still kept some of the flakes floating when he picked it up.

It was then that he decided to find her. It was the globe that told her future and let him know where she would be: the same plastic little ball that would lead him to Shin.

"This is quite pathetic," Vincent said. The battered man in front of Vincent was restrained to a chair. Sweat and blood mingled on the prisoner's pale chest—it rose and fell ungracefully as he heaved a few times between answers. Vincent figured that the dilated pupils and bags under the prisoner's eyes were enough to make him an honest boy.

"What else do you want from me?" The boy muttered and then failed to suppress a whimper.

"I want to understand, Shin." Vincent rose from his seat. Shin perplexed him. What Shin had told him did not make any sense. It wasn't just the drugs speaking on behalf on his logic. Shin truly believed in what he was saying.

"I told you all I know," Shin said slowly with a trembling voice.

"I do get that, but what I don't get is why." Vincent strategically raised his voice. "Why would you help a woman you've never even met? Why would you be doing all this digging for someone you don't even know or care about?" Vincent lowered his voice again before continuing. "Do you see where I'm coming from?"

"I told you it was a favor to a friend." Shin was visibly on the verge of tears. Vincent's patience was fading. This boy was either an idiot or insane.

"Your friend is dead, Shin. Why would you care? This is time-consuming work you've been doing pro bono, and for what?"

"You wouldn't understand," Shin whispered. Vincent stared at him for a minute and then kicked Shin in the chest sending him and the chair crashing to the ground. Vincent walked over to him and leaned down close to Shin's face.

"Where is Faye Morgan?"

"I—don't—know." Shin's body was shaking. He looked as though he might have another seizure. Vincent stood erect for a moment, but then changed his mind and bent back down.

"Don't you get it? I'm trying to stop her. If I don't, she will make prophets out of all of us."

Shin opened his eyes, but they were blank. He was having another seizure. The doctors rushed back in and started on him again. Before Vincent left, they asked him what they should do with him.

"Let him go and deliver a message for me." Vincent closed the door and walked down the bare halls and out to his car. He needed to go for a swim. He needed to gather his sanity back. He hated forcing himself to say her name. He couldn't help recalling the terrified expression on her face when she saw him for the first time in years. She thought he was dead. She _left_ him for dead. When he jumped into the pool and began his laps, all of those thoughts melted away. His consciousness ebbed back deep into his memories, and he found himself once again in the dark, cold landscape of that comatose dream that nearly took his life. The chlorine water became clouded and then he found himself in the Acheron, swimming for his life and grabbing onto the boat.

--

Spike didn't mean to touch her, not at first, but that frightened expression had intrigued him. In the couple of months he had spent with her, she revealed little of herself, but she always appeared confident and fearless. He had never seen her bite her nails before, and the way her other hand held onto her shirt strap made her look like a lost child. Inevitably, she jumped at the contact of his fingers against her bare shoulder. It was the first time he truly considered her pretty, even when she turned her face back toward him angry and confused.

"You have to keep the line moving," he said. She glanced back toward the plane's door and nodded with contempt. Spike knew she didn't want to make this trip. She didn't want to be a part of it, but the bounty was good. Jet insisted. When they asked her what her issue was, she froze. Her mouth gaped open, but no words came out. Nothing, she finally said. It's just a waste of time, she added with a dismissive wave of her hand. But here she was anyway because what Jet said was almost law to her. He didn't comprehend what kind of bond they had forged, but Faye was doctrinaire in her loyalty to him. As for Spike himself, she still resented him. She worked well enough with him, but there was no trust between them, not like Jet had in Faye, or Faye in Jet.

"Are you afraid of space jets, Miss?" A middle-aged attendant asked Faye as she walked past the cockpit and kitchen.

"No." Faye shook her head adamantly. "Just preoccupied," she added. This possibility hadn't even occurred to him. Faye was a monopod pilot. It was impossible for her to be afraid of space, or heights, or travel.

The attendant asked for Faye's ticket and led her personally to her seat on the far side just at the front of the main cabin. Spike walked on down to his seat in the middle row and center of the plane. He glanced back to watch Faye sit down and fend off the flight attendant. She held onto the hand rest tightly with her hand, and once he was sitting down she glanced at him. Her eyes tried to convey something, but he didn't understand. She turned to the man next to her, and they began to talk. He wondered about what. They talked for nearly the whole flight, and when she occasionally glanced back at him, her expression had changed. She wasn't trying to tell him anything anymore. Faye was looking for their bounty as planned.

Spike put the sleep mask on, as planned, and wondered what the hell could Faye have to say so much to a complete stranger.

--

Jacob, or Jake, Tempest loved the departure most, when they would rise like a mystical dragon, and he could look out the window, down on the small buildings as they became geometrical shapes and then the clouds of the terra-formed atmosphere obscured them out of view before the gentle release from Mars' gravitational pull. There were a few minutes though, right before entering the Gate, when he could see the Universe so vast extending before him in countless of stars.

What Jake Tempest hated the most were the smells. Airports had a tired scent, transient and unidentifiable. It was a smell burnt with the footprints of millions of people, so collective it had no face, no color, nor real texture. It made him nauseous if he sat in the waiting areas for too long. The worst smell was of the exhaust when the jet engines turned on as they were about to take off. But on this particular flight to Venus, he forgot the smells and, most surprisingly of all, he paid no attention to his window. There she was—sitting next to him of all people—one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. She was visibly trembling, pulling on the seatbelt so tightly that he thought she might suffocate or sever her body in half.

"It's secure enough," he said. She turned, startled by his voice, noticing him for the first time. Her bright green eyes lingered on him for a moment and then turned away. She glanced back to the seats behind them and then faced the front.

"You'll be fine." He tried again.

"I know," she finally uttered. She let go of the armrest for a second to run a hand through her short dark hair. She was pale, wore little make up on most of her face except her eyes, which were heavy with blue eye shadow, and her lips, which were bright red.

"My name is Jake," he offered. She looked at him soberly.

"I don't feel like chit-chat, Jake."

"It might help distract you." He smiled. She was still facing the cabin wall in front of them. He could already tell how stubborn and hardheaded she was.

"I don't need distractions."

The engines whirred on as she said her retort and her hands quickly adjusted her seatbelt once again and then held on firmly to the armrests. The exhaust smell flooded the cabins as the flight attendant passed closing the doors of each carry-on compartment.

"Do you need anything?" One of the flight attendants noticed the obvious terror in his seatmate's face.

"She will be fine," Jake responded for her. The flight attendant smiled courteously and kept walking to her seat.

"You're lucky we're at the front of the shuttle. You feel the brunt of the exit a lot of less." He started to feel like an idiot. She didn't move or acknowledge him. It was all right. He was a very patient man, and she was terrified. It made him wonder what could have compelled her to travel when she was obviously really scared. She was probably going toward something extremely important or escaping from something far more terrifying than a plane. How did people develop these phobias anyway? He didn't understand them perhaps because he didn't suffer from any. He had pet peeves but not blatant and illogical fears. For one, he wasn't fond of animals. His parents had never bought him a pet, and there was something very creepy about zoos and nature parks. Animals just didn't belong in the rest of the solar system without turning into something bizarre, like the Ganymede Searat. But he wouldn't tremble with fear at the thought of entering a zoo. It would be unpleasant, maybe boring, not traumatizing in the least.

But having never flown before, never even experiencing initial trauma, it was strange that a person would believe that their plane would be the one to come crashing down. Jake figured it was an extreme form of his disgust toward the unnatural presence of animals in the rest of the solar system. Even this mild annoyance on his part did not make much sense. After all, humans themselves were animals that did not belong in the rest of the solar system. But, we had conquered, not been deposited. He thought of the people that to this day, despite Earth's terrible living conditions, refused to leave. Another phobia, he supposed. It was a thick instinctual sense of mortality, which surfaced through phobias. Humans did not belong in the air. Humans did not belong in space. Humans did not belong in other planets. Flying was for mythical creatures, birds and Gods, lest we all end up like poor Icarus, plunging to our deaths in the ocean. Maybe we were too cocky, trying to be gods ourselves by taming the universe. But these planets were nothing but grains of sand. We are an egotistical race, even in our fears.

"There has never been an accident ever. You won't be the one to defeat the odds. None of us are that special," he said. But so much for wit or tact, because the minute she heard that, her face contorted with contempt. In his mind, it had sounded pretty impressive, but aloud it was patronizing and condescending. Jake didn't blame her one bit.

"I'm sorry," he said once she had turned angrily away from him. "I'm trying to help, but I'm botching it up pretty good."

"It's fine. Really, I'll be fine." Her tone was finally penetrable. She felt sorry for him, but pity was better than nothing.

"It's your first time on a shuttle?"

"Yes, I think so," she responded indifferently. It was an odd answer.

"You can ask for sedatives for a small fee," he suggested.

"No thanks, I don't do unconscious. I'm fond of being lucid."

"You _don't do_ a lot of things."

The shuttle began to move slowly, and the woman closed her eyes briefly. She was stubborn and braver than all of them. There had to be something pretty good on the other side of two gates on Venus. She was facing her fear, shaking, and leaving him in splendid wonder. She tried straightening her face as the shuttle gained speed and the cabin vibrated with intensity, but it didn't last long. Her mouth opened suddenly, and he thought she would scream for sure as the nose of the plane lifted up to exit the crater's atmosphere.

"I can't do this," she whispered. He glanced out the window and caught a brief glimpse of the geometric shapes of civilization shrinking below them.

"Yes, you can," he said to her. "Close your eyes and imagine the color green extending all around you. You're surrounded by grass, nothing but a beautiful prairie, like those on Earth. It is the flattest, most solid ground you've seen or stepped on."

Her eyes were tightly shut and her mouth was quivering. His adrenaline rushed with the sounds of artificial atmosphere struggling to pull the craft apart. He took a bold step and grabbed her hand. She tried to pull away instantly, but he gripped it harder and held it against the arm of the chair.

"It's only the wind," he said. "It'll be gone soon."

She did not question or fight him. The fear that gripped her had a stronger hold on her than his hand or even the pressure of the air. The sea of white outside his window turned into a brief flash of red before the shields came down and the cabin prepared for exiting Martian atmosphere. Mars pulled them back with all its might, but in the end, once you break free, nothing could make you go back. "Of course, she was scared," he mused. "God was trying to hold them down with all his power."

All at once, the cabin stopped shaking and the heavy pressure against their bodies lifted. The woman next to him took a deep breath and her hand relaxed. He let go. She opened her eyes, and he saw again the same green that inspired the vision of the prairie. She regarded him for a minute's worth of eternity. Her expression revealed no sentiment—not fear, rage, or relief. She examined her hand, which was red and sweaty. Her eyes darted to the aisle and the rows behind her. She put her hand on her lap as though not knowing what to do with it.

The shields lifted off the windows to allow passengers a brief glance at the universe before entering the Gate. It was Jake's favorite part of the trip, but he felt inexplicably guilty in gazing as the woman sat stiffly looking in front of her.

"You'll only get one chance to see this. The arrival isn't as good," he said bravely or stupidly. He couldn't decide. "It's a great reward for your efforts."

Her expression of indifference as she watched the stars surprised him. True, there were a few jarring interruptions of ships, monopods, and billboards, but it was still fairly impressive.

"I've seen this view many times before," she said and looked away. It was the last thing he expected to come out of her mouth. He was puzzled and even more intrigued.

"I thought you said you'd never been on a shuttle."

"I haven't, but I pilot a monopod, and I've been on other ships."

"You've sailed before."

"This isn't the sea," she muttered, but then shook her head. "Never mind."

"I don't understand. Why are you so afraid then?"

"I can't answer that."

"You don't know?" He smiled. She was paradox personified. She was an eagle, an expert who soared many times before, and she even gave off that air of huntress. How had she developed a sudden fear of heights? An eagle with vertigo—life never ceased to amaze him. Maybe she had really once been like Icarus and had burned her wings. She was just an injured bird then.

"Traumatic experience?" he asked. She didn't respond.

"Lack of control?" It was becoming a guessing game, but again no response. It would make sense that someone used to steering became anxious and vulnerable riding on someone else's piloting.

"Then it's got to be: no other choice," he concluded. Her green eyes observed him for a moment. They asked him to explain.

"You obviously don't have another choice but to fly in this shuttle, to be here, for whatever reason. This is the only ride you could take through space and time"—he referred to their travel by Gate by its most romantic sense—"because of some important thing you must do. If you didn't have to, you'd be flying there yourself, by your own means, at your own pace. Aren't I right, uh—I'm sorry I didn't get your name." He felt extremely clever.

"I didn't give it to you," she said. He affirmed this but kept waiting with an expectant glare.

"It's Faye. Faye Valentine." He simply grinned, shaking his head lightly and thoughtfully bringing a hand to his lips. He had been rendered speechless by that name. It fit her perfectly, and it spoke to him, or rather Fate or Fortune, spoke through it to him.

"Jake Tempest. It's a pleasure to meet you." He extended out his right hand. Her hand moved toward his but stopped before reaching it.

"You won't hold it hostage again, will you?" She smiled as though their entire interaction had been a game of flirtation all along.

"Those were much different circumstances," he said as their hands met. Not wanting to relinquish the attention he had finally gained, he kept the conversation moving. Topics flooded his mind, and he organized and categorized them. He had to start with the most non-intrusive subject. The vulnerability he had already witnessed made her edgy enough.

"Have you been to Venus before?"

"I've been to most of the major planets and moons," she answered quickly. It was another indirect response. He realized it would be too hard to follow that up with another question.

"That's lucky. I've traveled most of my life between Venus and Mars. I work for a pharmaceutical company raising funds and getting grants." He had really sounded a lot less dull in his mind.

"Do you like Venus?" He changed the topic abruptly when she turned yet again and glanced behind her.

"I don't know. I've never thought about it," Faye said.

"Most people think it's one of the most beautiful planets with the most incredible golden skies and soft white clouds. It's stark contrast with Mars. It's a living snow globe."

"It's terrible, actually," she said. She observed him with an impenetrable expression. It started to make him nervous. The conversation was taking a turn he wouldn't be able to control or get out of.

"Why would you say that? Is it the plants? They're not lethal. Those news reports always make it sound a lot worse than it is."

"It's a disease," she said.

"A chronic, acute allergic reaction," he corrected her defensively. He wasn't sure why, but it irritated him when foreigners judged Venus with nonchalance. It wasn't a plague-ridden planet. It was one of the few successful terra-formed environments, with a magnetic field to rival Earth's, and not at all barren like Mars or most moons. It was a miraculous planet.

"Semantics," she countered and then smiled. "You started it. There's no creepier comparison than a snow globe." Her eyes softened. She realized he was offended. He was an idiot and probably mucking it all up again.

"Oh, so now you've got something against harmless souvenirs?"

"I used to love them," she said, looking away from him. Her eyes were on the ceiling, or rather past it, on a distant memory in a distant world he could not see.

"One day," she said, " it suddenly dawned on me how creepy snow globes are. It's like trapping an empty world, full of buildings but devoid of people, and the little pieces of plastic raining down as if to replace the people who are supposed to be there."

Jake turned away from her. He wanted, for the first time, to really listen what she was saying rather than just watching her talk, or subconsciously staring at the rest of her body. Instead, all he could do was picture her in his mind. He saw something incredibly sad about her.

"You must travel a lot," he said absent-mindedly. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see her inquisitive expression return to her pretty face.

"Meaning?"

"I would imagine that a thing like a snow globe would only become eerie if you knew what the place was really like."

"Or what it isn't like." She laughed.

"What?" He was amused by her sudden turn in mood.

"I don't usually talk to strangers."

"Nothing like fear to make two people bond quickly." His last line cost him quite a long pause in their conversation, but he was able to capture her attention again when they brought the drinks, although there were quite a few interruptions. She began behaving strangely: she took bathroom breaks every ten minutes or so, but spending more time glancing around the cabin than in the actual bathroom. She seemed distracted, and he asked her if she was feeling okay. She said it might be a bit of space sickness, but it was a lie. A pilot of any kind wouldn't get sick, no matter how irrational her fear of shuttles was. He forced himself to breach into the personal again.

"What exactly do you do?" he asked. She didn't seem surprised or annoyed by the question.

"I'm sort of a collector." Another vague answer.

"Of debts, of bodies, or what?" He kept prying, but she simply laughed.

"I collect unpaid debts, but I'm more of a middleman."

"Or woman for that matter," he said, trying to be charming when he was troubled and confused. Woman—that was the problem that got him here in the first place. He had a bad feeling. Jake didn't really believe in intuition, but for a moment, he felt that femme fatale aura. Maybe he had met a spy, or rather hopefully, he was just spinning fast into a bad porno plot.

The jet engines started making noise again, and Faye gripped the hand rests with all her strength.

"We're exiting the Gate," Jake said. Their six hours together were almost over.

"I know." Her tone was low. There was an ominous expression on her face. That's the last thing that he remembers before the hijacking. First, there were the gunshots and then the broken movie screen, then a man yelled, but Jake didn't understand him. Adrenaline had shot through him so fast that he could hardly think. Instantly, he turned to Faye, and that's when the blood left him as quick as it had rushed through his body. She sat there eerily still. Her eyes were focused in front of her, and her hands were on her thighs. She was so composed and alert.

"How the hell did they get guns in here?" Jake thought, and Faye turned to him sharply, startling him.

"Don't speak. Be quiet, and you'll live." The terror vanished from her eyes. He didn't know if she had threatened him or tried to help him. This was another woman sitting next to him entirely.

"Hands on your heads!" a female hijacker shouted. Faye didn't hesitate to follow the order. Jake's cold hands trembled as he put them behind his head.

"Hey, didn't you hear?" a male yelled. "Wake up! I said, wake the fuck up." The hijacker had barely finished his sentence and Faye was on her feet, leg extended out down the aisle. A large man's body had been thrown toward the front, and she had kicked him back. Then she was gone and had somehow disarmed a woman in a sari. These people had semi-automatics, and Faye had just disarmed one of them. With his hands still on his head, Jake peeked above the seats and a saw a tall, thin man standing in the aisle. Everyone's eyes were on him. He gave a lazy nod at Faye. A few minutes later, once everyone was over their shock, the passengers clapped. A marshal came on the plane before it landed and arrested the three hijackers. It was over faster than it began.

"So you're a bounty hunter," Jake said as walked up behind her. Faye had just finished speaking with what Jake supposed were her two partners—the thin man and a huge beastly bloke with a cybernetic arm. Jake was still rattled from it all.

"Surprised? I told you I was a collector of sorts."

"Debts to society, cute." He wasn't all that amused.

"I try." She was smiling and being charming.

"And your shuttle phobia—that's why you confronted it? For a bounty?" He didn't know what he wanted anymore. Maybe he needed an explanation, but for what, he wasn't sure. Maybe he still wanted to know more about her.

"A girl's gotta earn her keep."

"Before you go out, take this." He reached into his pants pocket and pulled a small case. It was still wrapped.

"For the helium," she said as she took it. He nodded.

"It's not such a bad planet. It's only place that snows when it's warm, and not little plastic people bits." She laughed again and brushed back some of her dark hair from her face. He reached into his jacket pocket. He took his pen and wrote on the back of his business card.

"I'll be around that place this afternoon. We might catch each other again. I certainly need a drink. I ended up being more startled than you after that flight."

She took the card and examined it for a moment. She didn't say anything.

"Yes, well, anyway. I've got to regain my sanity before this meeting, so I better go. I wish we had met under better circumstances."

"Yeah," she said. He walked to the elevator for baggage claim not knowing if he would ever see her again.

--

Faye watched the city zoom by with pleasure. The brick and glass buildings intermingled with each other. The colors on some of the neighborhoods were so bright. They were a collection of pastels, which at first clashed with each other but then complimented the golden horizon. Venus's capital city, Sargasso, was a blend of chaos. Diversity wasn't rare in the solar system. It was how everyone coexisted, but in Venus, they had created their own hybrid culture, far more distinct than Ganymede. They were as close to life on Earth as you could get, so the natives boasted.

It would have been easier to take a taxi or to fly her monopod, but she longed for that strange comfort found in solitude, in wandering through a city not knowing a soul, not feeling anchored to anyone. She was just another organism flowing through its concrete veins. In all honesty, she didn't know what she was doing. There was a new bounty on Venus that she should have been after, but Jet told her to take the day off. Naturally, Spike had blabbed about her "space jitters," and Jet didn't trust her or was worried or both. When he told her to lay off this one, she didn't argue, which surprised both men. She had nothing to say to either of them. She didn't have the urge to tell them she had gotten over it, or to try to explain it away. She was tired of Spike's intrusive glare. It was the first time in a long time she just needed to get away, to talk to and see somebody else. Maybe she was turning soft and needed affection. When Jake held her hand on that plane, in that instant of fear, she felt this warmth inside of her. She couldn't let it go so easily.

She entered the hotel bar and spotted Jake sitting at a table with a bunch of men in suits. He had put on a tie and striped suit jacket. He was handsome: dark skin, tall, with reddish-brown eyes. She really didn't understand what she was doing there, but she couldn't turn back. His gaze caught hers as she took a seat at the bar. She ordered a dry Venus Martini, made with bourbon. It was sweet and soothing.

"I didn't think you would come," he said and sat down next to her. It was half an hour later after all the other men had left.

"Did you get your funding?" she asked. He loosened his tie.

"It was just a preliminary meeting. I don't know yet."

From there their conversation began. They ate down the block at some small diner, and they talked about stupid things, about food, Venus, and the world, and the people around them. He loved the planet. Jake's passion for the place reminded her that she didn't really have any place to love like that. They laughed about nonsense. There was this eerie normalcy to their talking. They walked through downtown square. They saw the Greek statues, a monument to the Goddess Venus, and they ate some strange pink fruit she couldn't remember the name of. He didn't ask her any questions about her. She didn't offer any information at all.

When the night ended at three a.m. in his hotel room, he was sound asleep and she was wide awake. They were on the fifteenth floor. She looked at the balcony through the sliding glass doors. She thought of running and jumping off, falling fast like one the white pods from the Venus plants. He had been so tender with her, and she felt absolutely nothing. She was numb to the core. They had touched, kissed, and consoled each other's loneliness, but it had stirred little emotion in her. In Jake's brown eyes, in one of those heated moments, she saw the iris lighten and turn hazel like Vincent's. She was seeing him everywhere, and it frightened her more than any unexplainable phobia.

"Leaving so soon?" Jake woke up just as she had finished dressing.

"Another bounty awaits." She didn't want to talk to him anymore. Her body had outgrown her need for affection. It wasn't satisfied or repelled but tired.

"Why did you come to see me?" He sat up in bed and stared at her as though trying to decipher something.

"I'm not really sure." Then she realized that they were both opportunists. She had taken advantage of him in her way and he had done the same in his. He had beheld her at one of the most publicly vulnerable moments in her life, and she had allowed him to take hold of that vulnerability. She had played her part of the victim. The conquest was over, and it was time for both of them to go home.

"I won't see you again, will I?" He looked embarrassed but resigned. She shook her head.

"Unless I get in a lot of trouble," he said. She couldn't help laughing. He stood up and searched for his pants on the floor and then slid them on. Faye fastened her gun holster, and finished by putting on her jacket. Jake walked over to her and took a deep breath as he approached her. He leaned in and kissed her cheek.

"Goodbye, Faye Valentine." Don't fly too close to the sun.

"Goodbye, Jake." Don't you mean the moon?

On the metro, she hugged her body the whole ride back to her stop. There were three young people about her age really riding the metro in silence. They were two girls and a boy with worn jackets and oily faces. One of the girls had her head resting on the other girl's shoulder. The boy sat across from them drifting in out of sleep. Faye held on to herself tightly.

As she walked through the abandoned alleys toward the docks, it started snowing. The Venus plants let out a flurry of pods and a strong wind carried them in all directions. When Bebop was in sight, she spotted Spike sitting on deck smoking a cigarette. She didn't want to deal with anyone else, but her intuition told her he had been waiting for her all this time.

"Did I violate my curfew again, dad?" she asked mockingly. He jumped, and glanced at her, angry and startled. He had been half-asleep.

"What the hell? What time is it?" Spike put out his half-burnt cigarette and stood up.

"Four or something. I'm going to bed," she said and turned away from him.

"Where the hell were you?" He was ready to scold her again.

"I'm sorry, what was that?"

"Jet gave you the afternoon off, not the whole damn day so you could go meet some guy in a bar. Are we just supposed to pick up the slack while you go whoring around?" She stared at him as he said this. Waves of shock, annoyance, and anger stirred within her, but she kept her composure as the realization dawned on her. She stepped closer to Spike until his breath was on her.

"What do you want from me, Spike? Love?" He held his breath while she examined his frightened expression and then shook her head. She faced the hangar door. "Good then, because I don't have anything for you."

Once inside the Bebop and out of view, she ran to her room. She almost collapsed on the bed, but her body resisted the urge. Instead, she stood in front of her makeshift mirror picking little white seeds from her hair and clothes.

--

Chapter inspired by Terry Evans, _Inhabited Prairie_ collection. I also edited the previous chapter and changed quite few things. As you can see the story is now divided into parts, so the first part, chapters 1-10, is called "Alba." Thanks for sticking with me. This story is a labor of love (i.e. blood, sweat, and tears).


	14. Chapter 12: Space in Between

**Heroes Don't Exist**

**Chapter 12: **_Space in Between_

It's morning, probably nine o'clock, and Ella refuses to move. Ella shifts in bed, under the covers, feeling cold and hot all over simultaneously. She knows she has to convince each limb toward the edge, but her body fights her. Her hands simply hold on to the sewn hem of the mattress easily palpable through the thin covers. Her mutinous senses even put up a clever farce of a potential cold, not yet here to make her miserable but still looming in some hot gland strengthening with each minute. It is one of those days when every cell knows she should stay in bed. Nothing good can come out of today. Even her stomach, no matter how hungry, understands this. But little by little, she convinces herself that to earn a living she has to get up. Starvation for a nineteen-year-old is not a viable possibility.

In the bathroom, like every morning, she's confronted with her own personal hell. Her coarse wavy hair sits on her head like a beast, stretching its wooly limbs out in all directions. The purple streaks have faded to a bleach blonde, and it looks downright horrendous. She has been meaning to re-dye it for weeks but hasn't decided on a color—green, hunter, not neon, perhaps. She shakes her head. No, not yet. She takes a break from her ghastly reflection and turns on her music. She closes her eyes for a moment as she moves head back and forth and mouths a few words. She sighs. The music will keep her moving.

She brushes her teeth, gags a little, and then rinses. She maims her hair into a tall ponytail, and then puts on her standard tee and cargos. The pockets down her legs are heavy with trinkets from work, gum, chap stick, money, and other nonsense she's already forgotten. She picks up a notepad sitting on the kitchen counter and reads the list of scribbled appointments. There's only one today: a busted cargo truck. Work has been slow lately, but Ella has enough dough thanks to selling Keeper's ship in spare parts. It broke her heart, but the old man believed in recycling and would have never forgiven her for treasuring his junk. _Junk is junk because it belongs to everybody_, he used to say. After his sight went, it was only a matter of time before his body gave out in one clean, fast cardiac arrest.

She smiles as soon as she hears the synthesizer notes of one of her favorite French songs. She grimaces when her speaker doles out a bit of static at the louder parts. She fucked them up the other day, and now they are busted for good. She sighs, still enjoying the song, and turns to the fridge. She finds two half-empty boxes of Thai take-out and a quarter-full carton of orange juice. That's all she could recognize at least. The rest of the contents are older than a week. She grabs the half-liter carton and downs it. She nearly chokes on it when she hears the beeping. She looks at her communicator sitting on the counter next to the notepad. It is asleep—its screen grayed out. Her eyes move to her messenger bag sitting on top of her tool box next to the futon.

_Run, run, run, je rentre a la maison_

_Run, run, run, pas d'autre solution_

Her heart drums along with the fast beat of the song. She holds her breath as the beeping persists. She opens her bag frantically and searches for the pager.

If I ever need to contact you, I'll do it through this, Shin had said when he handed her the pager. I'll only use it if for some reason I can't call you, so this is important, okay? I won't get lost again.

The rectangular screen of the pager flashes with a long number. It's not even from Mars. It's from a colony district, Phobos maybe? She runs to her communicator. Her hands are acting of their own volition now, and she is grateful for that. The line rings and a man answers. She's startled by its deep throaty tone. She doesn't recognize it.

"Who is this?" she asks.

"Ella? I'm calling on behalf of a friend. He's in a bad shape."

The communicator nearly falls out of her trembling hands. The song changes, and she turns off the stereo. Two hours later, she's at a makeshift doctor's office staring at Shin who lies half-conscious on a gurney in front of her. The doctor keeps saying something about detox and inducing a comma. Ella doesn't understand the jargon, and hearing it in simpler terms only makes her feel stupid when she still fails to grasp the situation. She feels that if she hadn't quit high school maybe would know what he was talking about. Did they cover these kinds of things in high school Anatomy?

Shin awakens for a moment and looks at her with numb gray eyes.

"Ella," he says slowly as though the two syllables barely make any sense to him. "Stay away from Faye." His eyes roll backwards, and he is unconscious after what seems like an eternity.

"It's all I can do to cleanse his system and stop the seizures. We won't know any long term effects until he wakes up," the doctor says to her.

"I'm going to get a catheter. I'll be back." He leaves into another room. Ella's head is spinning. She is so furious she is nauseated. She knew this would happen. Now what can she do? She can't take him back to Mars. She has to think but nothing is coming to her. All she has is Faye, but it could potentially cause more problems because Ella doesn't know what Shin had meant. What if Vicious is after Faye now, or worse… Then she remembers. She takes out her notepad and rifles through it. She grabs her communicator and starts dialing the number written on one of its small worn pages. She holds her breath for the thousandth time today when somebody answers. She lets it out and speaks.

"Jet, you may not know me, but I'm Ella, a friend of Faye's. Faye told me to call you if I ever needed something, and I couldn't reach her. She said I could trust you. Today, I need your help."

Two hours before Ella called Jet, he woke up with a throbbing headache and the goddamn phantom pain again. It was the fourth day in a row that he had experienced these bouts of pain from his head to his mechanical limb. The same length of time he had been searching for a good head to hunt—something not too easy and of course worthwhile for the money. Faye and Spike quickly became tense whenever they had no one to shoot at, so Jet had more problems on his hands than just lagging finances.

He sat up and rubbed his temples for a few seconds. He mustered the will to get up, take a shower and get dressed. Ein met him in the hall and walked with him for the rest of the way as the dog usually does before his morning meal. Upon reaching the galley, Jet spotted the dishes that once again no one but him bothered to clean. He shook his head in reproach though he had no contrite audience to witness it. Realizing this, he focused on the task of fixing this headache. It had been messing with his common sense lately. He opened the First Aid kit laying under the sink and popped two aspirins into his mouth. He opened up a can of cheap dog food for Ein who pushed the plate toward Jet's feet. He rinsed the coffee pot and set it up. They were running low on filters. This latest knowledge did not help his headache, so he went into the commons area and turned on his computer. He reviewed more pages of minor wanted criminals for theft or robbery, a few hundred thousand here or there, not enough money to make it worth the effort. The faces said little about their crimes. When they saw mug shots, most people would find something stern, heartless, and even wicked in the facial features or expressions. _I can see him being a rapist_, they'd say. _He has that look about him_. What look, Jet always wanted to ask. If they saw the same man walking down the street with a suit and briefcase, the thought would never occur to them. That was why most people made such unreliable witnesses. They never noticed enough and with the power of suggestion, they noticed details that were mere figments of a weak imagination.

When Jet examined these mug shots and surveillance pictures, he saw normal faces. He saw the guy serving him a drink at a bar or the woman standing in a cashier's lane with a toddler on the shopping cart's seat. He saw ordinary people that had been children once with parents who had been as ordinary as they. Perhaps, for most, that was a more frightening prospect. Even the most ruthless of criminals had such ordinary qualities. It made everyone of us a potential robber, murderer, and convict.

As a potential bounty caught his eye, he heard the voices of his two shipmates entering the common room. They were up earlier than usual.

"It was nothing. Would you let it go? I was just surprised to see the door open," Spike said.

"Right, which is why you jumped half a yard when I tapped your shoulder," Faye mocked. They walked into the galley without saying anything to Jet. It was early, and the children were already at it.

"I don't know why you even care that I was staring into a empty room."

"I don't really," Faye said, walking back out of the galley with two cups of coffee. "I was just curious. You looked like you had seen something interesting." She set down one of the cups next to Jet's computer and smiled at him. Faye had strange moments like these, when she behaved as though free of any preoccupation. These moments came intermittently. Usually, she could be as broody as Spike, but then something playful and kind erupted from her.

"What are you two going on about so early in the morning?" Jet said, and took a sip of his coffee—black and two spoonfuls of sugar—she was good.

"Apparently, Spike is less stable than we suspected." She rolled her eyes and smirked before bringing the coffee mug to her lips.

"Fucking yuck it up," Spike growled, already losing his temper. He slumped on the seat next to the couch. Faye ignored him and glanced at the computer screen.

"You found us a new bounty?"

"More like a lot of worthless midnight runs, but there's a new most wanted." It was a remote possibility in Jet's eyes, but he was up for a little exercise. The main problem with this one was that they had no picture or description in the system. It was a decent excuse to go after a hacker, but when no one knows what he looks like, it made it a pain. Lucky for them, the hacker had recently become more outlandish and public than in the past.

"What's the pay off?" Faye asked.

"8 million woolongs," Jet said.

"That's more like it."

"What did he do?" Spike asked.

"This guy is a threat to Interplanetary peace, but the price tag comes for defacing Earth, which is a historical landmark with enough problems of its own."

"I don't like it. Count me out," Spike said.

"What? Too much for you, honey?" Faye smiled, swayed her head in that same old way which annoyed Spike.

"No, it's not my style." Faye rolled her eyes at him, and turned back to Jet.

"Defacing how?"

"With big giant lasers from old satellites. They have no idea what the access codes are to turn them off."

"Wait, it can't be." Faye set down her cup on the table. Her hand was against her mouth pensively or withholding shock. "You're looking for Radical Ed."

"Who?" Spike muttered.

"You know him, Faye?" Jet asked, suddenly very interested. At least she was proving more useful than his so-called partner.

"You could say I've kept in touch for sure." Spike stared at her a little too intently.

"I was going to check with ISSP, but if you know something—" Jet said.

"I know how to find your hacker." She glanced at Spike.

Faye had only begun explaining how she could find Ed, when Jet interrupted her. He held up a finger which indicated a pause. There was a distant beeping coming from the bridge of the ship. Jet stood up.

"Who the hell is calling now?" Jet walked toward the bridge and left. Faye shrugged and sat down on the yellow couch. She was pensive once again.

"So how do you know this guy?" Spike wasn't exactly curious. He just wanted to know a little bit more about her past. She was terribly closed off, and from having spent months hunting with her, she was still as enigmatic as the first day he met her. He still didn't know whether one day she would kill both him and Jet in their sleep.

"I play the field," she said with that mocking smirk. Her chin dipped down toward her left shoulder with an air of mischievousness. Of course, she played the field. She probably thought she could coerce any guy with her powers of seduction. He didn't understand what was so sexy about a tomboy type like Faye. She was rude, obnoxious, and pathetically feminine—if what was meant by feminine was actually condescension.

"What's going to be challenge is luring Ed out. We had a bit of a fight last time we talked." Her eyebrows and shoulders raised when she said the word _fight_. It was downright irritating. Faye sat up and rested her elbows on her bare thighs. She glanced around the room. When her eyes fell on Ein, who trotted from the galley towards them, she paused for a while. A smile pulled at the sides of her mouth.

Jet came back in the room and looked paler but serious.

"You two will go on ahead to Earth," he said in his cop voice. "I'll meet you there. I have another tip I want to follow." Spike held in a grunt of protest. He was about to pry when Faye interrupted him.

"Suit yourself, but we'll need the dog."

"Ein?" Jet raised an eyebrow.

"Yes." Her hand brushed her hair from her face. Jet clenched his jaw as though he had no choice but to comply with Faye. Whatever this thing was that Jet had to take care of must have been serious enough for him to comply with Faye's wish so easily.

"Bring him back in one piece," Jet said. Ein yelped then huffed. Faye picked him up and pet him briefly.

"I promise."

Spike still had the urge to resist this mission on Earth. Faye could handle it. He looked at Jet for moment. Jet in a somber shadow nodded at him. He had to take care of this alone.

"Keep the dog alive. I'll be there in a few hours tops."

Spike shrugged in agreement and headed towards the hangar. Jet went back to the bridge to deploy their monopods. Spike stared at the expanse of the universe before him as Jet set course for Phobos.

Spike Spiegel hated Earth. From a distance, it appeared perfect and flawless in its blue-tinged glow. It was unlike all the other planets. Its air was pure, no metallic taste like on Mars, or heaviness like Ganymede, or unsettling thinness like Venus. The ring that had begun to form around the blue planet only softened its appearance, making it more mythical and majestic. On approach to any other planet, you would be overwhelmed by the neon signs of civilization—billboards, arrows, traffic delays, government advisories. When you approached Earth, all that waited for you was a halo, a shield of debris which from a distance only emphasized its Eden-like attraction. But like many beautiful objects, when you got too close, you saw its fragments. You saw the bits of rock, not unusual around many planets, mixed with shattered metal pieces from ships, satellites, space stations and the Gate, the harbinger of civilizations greatest achievement and worse nightmare. A small distance from this halo was the largest piece of them all. The half-eaten moon was nothing more than a big asteroid now. It has been predicted that one day this rock will split Earth apart through a terrible but rather plausible collision with any large debris around Earth or any rock outside of it.

Yes, Earth was a tomb.

As they descended into its fiery atmosphere, it was no better. The uneasiness didn't leave Spike but worsened. The moon was supposed to be Earth's anchor to life, but besides the constant barrage of debris which mostly burned before impact, Earth had uncannily recovered with indifference to the billions of lives lost. No plague, no war, nothing in history could compare. Old cities were now flooded or overgrown. Some weren't even recognizable. Whole forests had usurped towns, and those concrete graveyards that remained were like gray deserts. People were forced by the Biblical weather to move mostly underground. But it was when Spike set foot on Earth that he could feel its emptiness. The constant wind no matter where you were and the unpredictability of the weather was enough to make it barely tolerable. Above everything though, it was those people who refused to move—it was them that he hated the most. When he had to come here to apprehend someone, he often encountered these people—like ghosts attached to their birthplace, as hollow as Earth and its moon.

"So where is Radical Ed?"

"Asia, anywhere from 35th-40th districts. Ed roams around there."

"That's a big place."

"When Ed sees us, we'll be contacted. For now, we just fly."

After only twenty minutes, Faye had to land because Ein was barking at her, and she feared the worst. They landed on a stretch of desert in the Southern hemisphere. Spike stepped out, a little dizzy and disoriented by the pressure change and the breeze. From a distance, he watched her stand still as Ein scurried a few yards away in search for the most suitable place to do his business. On the Bebop he was like a cat, trained to go on a sandbox that Jet had acquired for him. It was bizarre and unsettling that such an animal should go against his instincts, but Jet had somehow convinced the dog not to piss all over the place.

At first Faye watched him go, but then, distracted by the wind, she closed her eyes and her chest rose high as she breathed in deep. Spike imitated this action but instead smelled the same disgusting scent, like the back of those cheap restaurants on Mars with trash bins full of discarded over-steamed vegetables mixed in with cleaning fluid. It permeated most of Earth, though in some places it filled your nostrils and in some others it just half-lingered. Faye opened her eyes and so did Spike. They stared at each other as she walked towards him. He noticed a change in her. It was too dramatic to miss. Her dark hair shined as it waved in the breeze. Her usually pale skin looked slightly darker, and her cheeks were tinged with red. But her eyes, they were this blue-green—_aqua was it?_—that he had never seen before in his life. It was like the Faye he had known all these months was a ghost, dimmed by the vastness of space, and this woman in front of him was the real Faye.

You were born on earth, he would say.

How did you know? She would ask.

You look beautiful—no, he wouldn't say that—You look like you belong.

"Hey, are you listening?" Faye asked.

"What?"

"Did Jet tell you how long it was going to be? You don't want to refuel on Earth. It's nasty place to find fuel."

"A few hours," Spike said. She made a face of disapproval or dismay. Then suddenly her shoulders jerked. She quickly grabbed her bracelet. One of its gems was blinking red. Faye called back Ein.

"Get back on. We have our coordinates."

Three-hundred miles to the Southwest is where Faye's coordinates took them. They landed on a dirt patch surrounded by concrete and metal ruins. When he stepped out of the Swordfish, the breeze hit him with that uncanny scent but ten times stronger than before. He shielded his face. Through watery eyes, he was barely able to see Faye tying Ein to a metal pole jutting up from the ground.

"What's wrong with you?" she asked him.

"What is that smell?"

She scrutinized him for a minute and then pivoted her head around trying to spot this smell he spoke of.

"I don't—" she started to say, half-confused, but then she turned against the wind. "You mean the sea?" She immediately laughed. She didn't cover her mouth like most women. Her bare shoulders pulled back and one of her hands rested on her hip as her middle folded inward. All teeth unabashedly showed. Her laughter ended with a soft sigh.

"No, I guess there are no seas like these in the rest of the Solar System." Her tone was somber. Her blue-green eyes became a little heavier with color, darker, older. She sat down and lay back against a piece of concrete rock. She glanced up at the sky and stretched out her legs. Her dark jeans were already covered with the white dust surrounding them.

"So what's the dog for?"

"A peace offering."

"Or a sacrificial pig."

"Hardly. I figured Ed might like dogs." His mouth fell open. This was their brilliant plan. It was hot, smelly, and dusty as hell, and for all they knew the twenty percent chance of rock showers could turn into ninety percent in a second.

"So we just sit and wait until whenever he feels like showing up? This is insane. I don't know why Jet listens to you." He slid down next to her and pulled off his jacket. He patted off some of the white dust in vain. He took out a cigarette from the front pocket.

"Not going to offer me one?" she said in a coaxing tone. She had pulled her legs to her chest. Her face rested on her knees and her hand was laid out before him with her fleshy, pink palm up. Though her eyes were still heavy with age, the rest of her only seemed more youthful.

"I've only seen you smoke a couple of times," he said, pulling his lit cigarette from her mouth and handing it to her. His fingertips touched hers upon exchange. He took out another cigarette.

"I only smoke when I'm bored," she said after taking her first drag. They both smoked in silence for a while. The breeze blew stronger and suddenly he felt the emptiness of the space around them. The air made him feel unusually light. His nose had grown accustomed to the smell, but he felt overwhelmed by something different altogether. His body was like a teenage boy's, overcome by a dozen bodily and psychological urges. The idle hand without a cigarette wanted badly to touch a bare shoulder or remove the strands of dark hair that constantly fell across the bridge of her nose. His whole arm in fact planned to betray him if it mustered the courage to slide behind Faye's back. He wanted for a moment to just closely take in her face and the color of her eyes. His legs begged him to jump up around her or run back into the Swordfish. It was the breeze and the ghost smell making him woozy.

"Come on, Ed," Faye muttered. She glanced back at Ein who had lain down a few feet away from the rusted pole. From the west, they heard the echo of a loud crash.

"Goddamn rocks," Spike said and lit a new cigarette. Faye shushed him. She was still observing Ein. Spike turned and saw the small contraption flying toward Ein. The dog finally got up and protested at the incoming object. His whole body bounced up with each bark. The toy helicopter flew in fast and rather close which startled Ein into a whimper. It flew past Faye and Spike and then doubled back. Faye jumped up and waved. She was strangely giddy. Maybe she liked the guy a lot more than she had let on.

"Faye-Faye!" a child shouted at them. Her face scrunched up at the nickname, but she quickly moved to where Ein stood still alert. A dark child with a head full of unruly red hair ran towards Faye and grappled her leg with all small limbs. Faye had that annoyed yet pleased expression again. Ed muttered something in a language Spike didn't understand.

"I know, but I came as promised," Faye said. The kid pulled back and sat with legs folded and arms crossed.

"Long time coming," she hissed.

"Settle down. I brought you a present. His name is Ein." Faye pointed to the dog.

"Ein? It's not fair that a dog gets to be a member of the Bebop before Ed." Spike's dizziness was turning into a headache.

"What the hell is going on? Does this kid know Ed?"

The kid's hazel eyes lit up when they noticed Spike. He found his own leg entangled in child limbs in the same way Faye's had been.

"Ed is Ed, silly. Like Spike is Spike."

He was seriously starting to get creeped out by this kid.

"This is Radical Edward in the rather bony and small flesh." Faye smiled, amused by the surprise.

Ed was a kid—a little kid. In a way it made sense. The drawings surfacing all over Earth were childish scribbles, stick figures, and connect-the-dot animals. Ed explained in a flurry of words how the cops were after her, and that she had blown up a couple of the vehicles already. But the real culprit, she said, was out there above Earth. An old satellite, lonely in the graveyard of debris, was drawing pictures of the Earth it used to know.

When Spike received the coordinates of the Bebop, Faye set about tying Ed and her—yes, the kid was a she—computer contraption to the Red Tail. They hadn't discussed this whole issue of Ed being a member of the Bebop. The three things he hated were across from him and possibly aboard the ship for good. Spike had to have talk with Jet. This was getting pretty ridiculous.

"What did Jet say?" Faye asked.

"Nothing. He just sent the coordinates." There it was again—that dour expression that filled only her eyes.

"Okay," she said and boarded the Red Tail. Ed grinned with deep content. She didn't mind riding strapped with rope to the monopod. Ein had already scurried inside. Faye didn't complain this time about Spike riding with the dog. It was her idea, he had told her before they left. After about twenty minutes, the Bebop came into view. Spike noticed that the Red Tail began to slow down and descend too soon. It was preparing to land near the ship.

"What are you doing?" Spike asked over the comm.

"Something's very wrong," Faye answered.

"I don't get it."

"Call it a woman's intuition."

The Red Tail touched down. Spike considered heading for the hangar anyway, but if he'd learned anything in the last ten years is that a woman's intuition is somehow rarely wrong. Spike got out of the Swordfish and headed to meet up with Faye who quickly untied Ed.

"Just stay here, okay? Then I'll let you fly them into the hangar when I know it's clear."

Ed rogered and plopped down on the dirt. Ein circled around her, still undecided about this new presence. Spike didn't know what Faye had meant by "fly them into the hangar," but she was already walking toward the Bebop. The closer they became, the faster she moved. Every muscle in her body had tensed up, and her legs finally broke out into a trot. His own adrenaline began rushing through his veins. Before he climbed the ladder, he reached to unfasten his gun so he could pull it out in a moment's notice. Faye stopped running as she entered the hangar but did not pull out her gun.

Neither of them stopped to examine the unfamiliar monopod parked next to the Hammerhead. It was black, luxury class, with silver trim. Faye glanced back at Spike. Every rigid muscle in her face asked him if he recognized it. He shook his head. She still didn't pull out her gun, but he kept his hand on his. Her pace had moved to her usual decisive stroll—calm, revealing no urgency or anxiety.

He entered the common area only a few seconds after her. She had stopped dead without making a noise. He moved sideways and saw the elephant first then the girl. She had her hair pulled up and two large red headphones cupping both ears. She hadn't noticed their presence yet. The tattoo of the elephant nearly covered her entire shoulder blade revealed mostly by the shape of her tank top. It wasn't really an elephant on closer observation. It was an adorned elephant head, like from a circus, on top of a man's body. He was sitting, legs folded in front of him, four arms surrounding his torso: one outstretched greeting them, one holding a spear, another a bowl, and the upper left holding what may have been a scepter in the shape of a cobra.

Faye's finger tips touched the face of the elephant. The girl turned around and stood up. Her green eyes gave no hint of surprise. She pulled off the headphones. Both women stared at each other; Faye, in surprise, and the young girl, in fear. They greeted each other in silence.

***

_Dear Shin,_

_If you are reading this, it means that whether I succeeded or failed I'm dead. It also means that Faye is finally ready. I don't think of it as leaving my legacy to her but rather that I was simply holding her place until she came along. I know you of all people will never understand my choice, but when you meet her I can hope you'll see what I saw. I have no right to ask you a dying wish, but I am compelled. I need to find Faye Morgan—who she was, where she came from, and who is after her. You're the only person I can trust with this. I have to know, but now I can't. I am asking you to find her forgotten past because she needs it. I needed it once, and one day, you'll probably need it too._

_Ella will tell you all I know. _

_Thank you. I know you won't turn your back on this._

_~J._

---

Chapter inspired by John Baldessari's _Space in Between (One Risky)_, 1986.

Lyrics from "Un Gars Fragile" by the Prototypes.


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